Canadian Literary Forms

The Geist Jackpine Sonnet Contest is an explo­ration of one dis­tinctly Canadian lit­er­ary form. The jack­pine son­net was cre­ated by Milton Acorn, it is a short sonnet-like poem. Are there other dis­tinctly Canadian lit­er­ary forms?

The 3-day novel was invented in Vancouver in the 1970s. The cri­te­ria for a 3-day novel is that it is writ­ten in 72 hours. This is enough time to write a novella-length work, but not much time for edit­ing. The effect: a stream of con­scious­ness rushes onto the page while the author stug­gles to wran­gle it into novel form.

The Viator poem is cred­ited to Robin Skelton, a British emmi­grant to Canada, who was co-founder and for­mer edi­tor of the Malahat Review. The cri­te­ria for a Viator poem: the first line of the first stanza is the same as the sec­ond line of the sec­ond stanza, which is the same as third line of the third stanza, and on and on, ad infinitum. 

The guide­lines Milton Acorn sup­plied for writ­ing jack­pine son­nets are not very strin­gent. A jack­pine son­net can grow into what­ever form suits it: is this enough to make it a lit­er­ary form?