Inuvik (Feb 20/04) - Though advancing to the next round of CBC Radio's third annual Poetry Face Off may say a lot about the quality of Bob Mumford's poetry, it wasn't the best compliment his prose has been paid.

"After I read the poem, a woman approached me and said 'I could see every image you were talking about,'" said Inuvik's poet. "And that's how I knew that I had succeeded."

In January, CBC in Inuvik asked Mumford if he would be interested in submitting a poem to the competition. While the subject matter remained up to the writer, 'belonging' was the theme participants were instructed to build their verse around.

At the beginning of February, with his poem entitled "Belonging at the Edge", Mumford set off for Whitehorse where he and four other poets from the North read their work for a panel of judges.

While the panel decided that Mumford's poem was tops, he compliments the other entrants' efforts and credits his preliminary win to his background as an actor.

"I think the other poems were as good and if I could've read them, maybe another person might have won," he said.

Mumford says that writing a poem is one matter and presenting it in a meaningful way is something altogether different.

"That's why I think I won that contest; it wasn't so much the poem, but the performance."

With a Masters of Fine Arts in acting from Brandeis University in Boston, Mumford knows a thing or two about performing.

While attending the school, he had the opportunity to study under Morris Carnovsky, whom Mumford and much of the performing arts world reveres as the greatest American Shakespearean actor.

In addition to being taught by Carnovsky, other highlights in Mumford's acting career include playing the role of Biff Loman in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman at the Citadel Theatre in Edmonton.

After some success on the stage and some bit parts in television, Mumford taught his craft at the post secondary level in the United States and Canada.

These days, Mumford's stage presence is felt in the musical realm as a member of the Inuvik jazz ensemble, Razzmajazz. He also fills his spare time with keeping a journal, writing poetry and the odd song, 'whenever the mood hits,' he says.

So what separates writing poetry from songwriting?

"Melody," says Mumford. "If you have a beautiful or catchy melody you can put anything to it but with poetry, all you have are words."

Mumford's poem will soon be featured, along with other regional winners, on Shelagh Roger's Sounds Like Canada, before an overall winner is selected.