13 poetry collections by past CBC Literary Prizes winners and finalists from 2024
Celebrate poetry with these books by past CBC Literary Prizes winners and finalists that are being published in 2024.
The 2024 CBC Poetry Prize is currently accepting submissions. The winner will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, a two-week writing residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and their work will be published on CBC Books.
Four finalists each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and their work is also published on CBC Books.
The Seventh Town of Ghosts by Faith Arkorful
The Seventh Town of Ghosts explores these titular towns through songs that help readers grapple with the challenges of existence and independence. The book offers insight into the power of connection, tenderness and the human spirit.
Faith Arkorful has had her work published in Guts, Peach Mag, Prism International, Hobart, Without/pretend, The Puritan and Canthius. She was a semi-finalist in the 2019 92Y Discovery Contest. Arkorful was born in Toronto, where she still resides.
In 2020, Arkorful was shortlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize.
Midway by Kayla Czaga
Midway is a poetry collection that explores the writer's grief in the aftermath of her parents' deaths. The poems travel from the underworld to London's Tate Modern in a way that's both comforting and disconcerting.
Kayla Czaga is also the author of For Your Safety Please Hold On and Dunk Tank. For Your Safety Please Hold On won the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and was nominated for the Governor General's Literary Award for poetry and the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. She lives in Victoria and served as the online poetry mentor for Simon Fraser University's Writer's Studio.
Czaga was on the 2018 CBC Poetry Prize longlist.
Naked Pictures by Paulette Dubé
Naked Pictures is a hybrid poetry collection and field-photo journalism relating the relationship of Jasperite poet Paulette Dubé with the Albertan lands, including everything that happened surrounding the XL Keystone pipeline.
Dubé's poetry and prose has been nominated for the Milton Acorn Memorial People's Poetry Award, the CBC Alberta Anthology, the Alberta Writers' Guild Best Novel Award, the Starburst Award, the Exporting Alberta Award and the Fred Kerner Award. She was recently named the writer in residence at the Jasper Municipal Library.
Dubé won second place for the 2005 CBC Poetry Prize.
Hazard, Home by Christine Lowther
Hazard, Home is a collection of nature poetry with a decolonial lens. The work examines the world with wonder at the animals and plants — and grief due to urbanization, climate change and loss of biodiversity.
Christine Lowther is a writer from Tofino, B.C. She is also the author of four poetry collections. She served as Tofino's poet laureate from 2020-2022.
Lowther was shortlisted for the 2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize.
Limited Verse by David Martin
Limited Verse is a collection of classic poems with a new twist — they're translated into New English, made up of only 850 words.
David Martin is an author of poetry collections Kink Bands and Tar Swan, which was a finalist for the Raymond Souster Award and the W.O. Mitchell City of Calgary Book Prize.
Martin won the CBC Poetry Prize in 2014.
Crying Dress by Cassidy McFadzean
Crying Dress is a poetry collection rooted in the tradition of lyric poetry while adopting its own spin and linguistic play that challenges an idea of poetic coherence. It spans various locations and brings together scenes from intimate moments in domestic life to ones featuring the ghosts of Brooklyn.
Cassidy McFadzean is writer who was raised in Regina and currently lives in Toronto. Her poetry books are Drolleries and Hacker Packer, which won two Saskatchewan Book Awards. She also wrote a crown of sonnets called Third State of Being. She was raised in Regina and currently lives in Toronto.
McFadzean was a finalist for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2013.
A Year of Last Things by Michael Ondaatje
A Year of Last Things is Michael Ondaatje's long-awaited return to poetry. Drawing on his personal experiences, this collection goes back in time to all the borders that he's crossed with imagery at once witty, moving and wise.
Ondaatje is a Canadian literary icon. His novels and poetry have earned international acclaim, and he was the first Canadian ever to win the Man Booker Prize — in 1992, for the wartime story The English Patient. Born in Sri Lanka and educated in England, Ondaatje moved to Canada when he was 18 to attend university.
Ondaatje began his writing career in 1967 as a poet, winning two Governor General's Awards for poetry before turning to fiction. Over his career, he's won the Giller Prize, the Governor General's Literary Award and France's prestigious Prix Medicis.
In 1982, Michael Ondaatje won the CBC Short Story Prize.
Empires of the Everyday by Anna Lee-Popham
Anna Lee-Popham's debut poetry collection Empires of the Everyday explores the themes of modern city living, violence and dealing with artificial intelligence.
Lee-Popham is a poet, writer and editor from Toronto. She is a graduate of the MFA in creative writing at the University of Guelph, the Writer's Studio at Simon Fraser University and University of Toronto's School of Continuing Education creative writing certificate.
Lee-Popham was on the longlist for the 2022 CBC Nonfiction Prize.
The Work by Bren Simmers
The poems in The Work explore the themes of loss and grief and how one can make themselves whole again after being broken. From the sudden death of her father, her mother's dementia and her sister-in-law's terminal illness, Simmers' poems show us how healing can come from love.
Bren Simmers is the author of four books, including the wilderness memoir Pivot Point and Hastings-Sunrise, which was a finalist for the Vancouver Book Award as well as a collection of poetry titled If, When.
Simmers won the 2022 CBC Poetry Prize for her poetry collection Spell World Backwards, which is included in The Work. She was previously longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2013 and in 2012 for Science Lessons.
A Blueprint for Survival by Kim Trainor
A Blueprint for Survival is a poetry collection that starts in wildfire season and then explores the forms of resistance and survival in the context of climate change. It examines each of these forms as a blueprint for being in and seeing the world.
Kim Trainor is the author of the poetry collections A thin fire runs through me, Karyotype and Ledi. Her poems have won the Fiddlehead's Ralph Gustafson Prize, the Malahat Review Long Poem Prize and the Great Blue Heron Prize. She lives in Vancouver.
Trainor was on the 2019 CBC Poetry Prize longlist.
Precedented Parroting by Barbara Tran
The poems in Precedented Parroting explore themes of loss, the natural world, Asian stereotypes and our feathered friends. It's also a book about survival through generations and how both loss and feathers can enable and necessitate flight.
Barbara Tran is a poet whose work has appeared in Women's Review of Books, Ploughshares and The New Yorker. Honours include a MacDowell Colony Gerald Freund Fellowship, Pushcart Prize and Lannan Foundation Writing Residency. She was born in New York city and currently lives in Toronto.
Tran was longlisted for the 2018 CBC Nonfiction Prize.
Scientific Marvel by Chimwemwe Undi
Scientific Marvel is a poetry collection that looks into the history of and current life in Winnipeg. With humour and surprise, it delves into deeper themes of racism, queerness and colonialism while keeping personal lived experiences close to the page.
Chimwemwe Undi is a Winnipeg-based poet, editor and lawyer. She is the Winnipeg poet laureate for 2023 and 2024. She won the 2022 John Hirsch Emerging Writer Award from the Manitoba Book Awards and her work can be found in Brick, Border Crossings, Canadian Literature and BBC World.
Undi was longlisted for the 2020 CBC Poetry Prize.
The Lantern and the Night Moths by Yilin Wang
The Lantern and the Night Moths is a translation of poems by five contemporary and modern Chinese poets, Qiu Jin, Fei Ming, Dai Wangshu, Zhang Qiaohui and Xiao Xi. The poems are translated next to their original text and the book includes essays about the art of poetry translation.
Yilin Wang is a writer, poet and Chinese-English translator. Her fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction have appeared in Clarkesworld, The Malahat Review, Arc Poetry Magazine, Grain, CV2, carte blanche and The Tyee. She is based in Vancouver.
Wang was longlisted for the 2020 CBC Poetry Prize.
