From left: Andrea Scott (image: Elliot Scott-Bigsby); Emily Riddle (image: Conor McNally); Hiromi Goto; Matthew Hollett (image: April White); and Selina Boan (image: Kayla MacInnis) have been shortlisted for the 2020 CBC Poetry Prize. Images: CBC Poetry Prize
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
An Initial Pool of Almost 3,000 Entries
Announced today (November 5) by CBC Books in Toronto, five writers have been shortlisted for the 2020 CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) Poetry Prize.
The award program this year drew 2,930 entries from many parts of Canada–the largest submission tally on record.
This year’s winner is to be announced a week from today, on November 12.
A purse of 6,000 Canadian dollars (US$4,598) goes to the winner, along with a two-week residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Banff, Alberta, and publication on the CBC Books site. Each of the remaining four shortlisted finalists gets 1,000 Canadian dollars (US$766).
Publishing Perspectives readers are familiar with CBC Books because of its production each year of the televised competitive literature program, Canada Reads.
CBC Poetry Prize 2020 Shortlist
Links in our shortlist here are to pages on the CBC Books site with information about each writer and the text of her or his poem.
- Conversations with Niton, Have you ever fallen in love with a day by Selina Boan (Vancouver)
- alley/bird/ally by Hiromi Goto (Victoria)
- Tickling the Scar by Matthew Hollett (Montreal)
- Learning to Count by Emily Riddle (Edmonton)
- Adipose Glose by Andrea Scott (Victoria)
Jurors in this year’s program are:
- Poet, sound performer, and writer Kaie Kellough
- Poet, novelist, and essayist Dionne Brand
- Author and poet Stephen Collis
The shortlist is drawn from a 32-person longlist. The 2019 winner was Calgary writer Alycia Pirmohamed for her collection of poems, Love Poem with Elk and Punctuation, Prairie Storm and Tasbih. There’s also a French-language edition of this prize program, too, the Prix de poésie Radio-Canada,
The CBC Books program is supported by Canada Council for the Arts, and includes not only the Poetry Prize but also the CBC Nonfiction Prize and CBC Short Story Prize.
Longlisted writers for the 2020 CBC Poetry Prize. Image: CBC Books
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