Citrus Dreams by Elena Bentley

Elena Bentley has made the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for Citrus Dreams.

The winner of the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, a two-week writing residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and have their work published on CBC Books. The four remaining finalists will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and have their work published on CBC Books.

The shortlist will be announced on Nov. 14 and the winner will be announced on Nov. 21.

If you're interested in the CBC Literary Prizes, the 2025 CBC Nonfiction Prize opens in January and the 2025 CBC Poetry Prize will open in April.

About Elena Bentley

Elena Bentley is a poet, multi-genre writer, editor, and proud Métis aunty from Treaty 6 Territory in Saskatchewan. Her debut poetry chapbook, taliped, was published in 2023 by 845 Press (taliped was also a finalist for the 2022 Vallum Chapbook Award). You can find her poems in places like Arc Poetry, Room, The Malahat Review, PRISM international, and Poetry Pause, among others. She is the author of the children's picture book The Pickle in Grandma's Fridge (YNWP 2022), and she was shortlisted for CANSCAIP's 2023 Writing for Children Competition (YA category). Elena is the Editor for Grain magazine.

Entry in five-ish words

"Where indecision and desire meet."

The poems' source of inspiration

"Citrus Dreams, like many other poems I've written lately, is really an exercise in release. Releasing myself, as a bisexual woman and poet, from expectation, judgment, and censorship—both from within and without. It's about the inherent tensions between desire and pleasure and what is, could be, or might have been, whether in life or on the page."

First lines

i.   off state route 167

i kiss your freckled shoulders,
taste a brisk blend 
of sweat and coconut 
sun cream (45 SPF)

we can kiss here,
sequestered by a syzygy 
of mountain peaks, where
the cove is quiet and 
far from homophobia
and hot valley breezes

Check out the rest of the longlist

The longlist was selected from more than 2,700 submissions. A team of 12 writers and editors from across Canada compiled the list.

The jury selects the shortlist and the eventual winner from the readers' longlisted selections. This year's jury is composed of Shani Mootoo, Garry Gottfriedson and Emily Austin. 

The complete longlist is: 

• Borderland by Howard Anglin (Calgary)
• on the last day of ramzan, the moon makes the sun in its image by Manahil Bandukwala (Ottawa)
• Lament by Jessica Bebenek (Montreal)
• Citrus Dreams by Elena Bentley (Clavet, Sask.)
• When it's 9:48pm and the kids are asleep and you realize you've spent the entire night on your phone by Nicole Boyce (Calgary)
• ABC Gum by Devlin (Halifax)
• scar/city I by Daniela Elza (Vancouver)
• I Thought I Might by Tamsyn Farr (Wakefield, Que.)
• Score Before Cutting by Claire Gordon (Ucluelet, B.C.)
• There is no neutral way to say I was fourteen by Cicely Grace (Vancouver)
• After Icebergs by Matthew Hollett (St. John's)
• a house in O's name by Eimear Laffan (Nelson, B.C.)
• Gas Station Coffee by Paula Lemke (Langley, B.C.)
• magdalene sonnets by Louie Leyson (Vancouver)
• 吃苦 (Eat the Bitterness) by Emily Yiling Ma (Burnaby, B.C.)
• Kananaskis by Kathleen McCracken (Belfast, Northern Ireland)
• A Tenuous Life Act, I Lay Dreaming by Sasha Pickering (Halifax)
• Regeneration and other poems by Katherine Poyner (Nanaimo, B.C.)
• Girls of the Now by Dora Prieto (Vancouver)
• No Apples and Oranges by Marion Quednau (Sechelt, B.C.)
• i'll expect big things from the moon later tonight by c. a. r. rafuse (Ottawa)
• Song for the Earth and the Water by Harold Rhenisch (Vernon, B.C.)
• Palimpsest County by Rachel Robb (Toronto)
• Doom Scroll by Jenny Sampirisi (Toronto)
• Northern Childhood by Eleonore Schönmaier (Ketch Harbour, N.S.)
• Some Notes on Intoxication and Simile: Like Butterscotch by Catherine St. Denis (Victoria)
• The Killer and the Harpist by Catherine St. Denis (Victoria)
• The Rupture by Ayşe Lara Yildirim (Toronto)