Meet the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize readers
These writers will be determining the longlist for the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize
Every year, CBC Books enlists the help of established writers and editors from across Canada to read the thousands of entries submitted to our prizes.
Our readers compile the longlist, which is given to the jury. The jury will then select the shortlist and the eventual winner from the longlisted selections. You can meet the readers for the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize below.
The 2024 CBC Poetry Prize is currently accepting submissions until June 1, 2024.
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 have their work published on CBC Books.
Here are the 12 writers who will be reading the submissions to the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize.
Faith Arkorful
Faith Arkorful has had her work published in Guts, Peach Mag, Prism International, Hobart, Without/pretend, The Puritan and Canthius, among others. She was a semi-finalist in the 2019 92Y Discovery Contest. Faith was born in Toronto, where she still resides. In 2020, she was shortlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize for Family Affair.
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.
Simina Banu
Simina Banu is a Montreal-based author. Having published two chapbooks before, her first full-length collection of poetry was POP which won the 2021 ReLit Award for poetry. Her poetry has appeared in filling Station, untethered, In/Words Magazine and the Feathertale Review, among others.
I Will Get Up Off Of is a poetry collection about trying to leave a chair. Bound by anxiety and depression and looking for hope everywhere from fitness influencers to psychics, the poems eventually become more and more desperate and highlight the importance of art when it comes to survival.
Colleen Coco Collins
Colleen Coco Collins is an interdisciplinary artist of Irish, French and Odawa descent based in Nova Scotia. Sorry About the Fire is her first poetry collection.
Sorry About the Fire is a debut poetry collection that sees the world through a triple lens of Irish, French and Odawa heritage. Using rhythmic language, it attempts to detect patterns and answer questions of time and being.
Dallas Hunt
Dallas Hunt is Cree and a member of Wapsewsipi (Swan River First Nation) in Treaty Eight territory in northern Alberta. His first poetry collection, Creeland, was published in 2022. His children's book, Awâsis and the World-Famous Bannock, illustrated by Amanda Strong, was nominated for several awards and was one of the 2024 CBC Kids Reads contenders. Hunt lives in Vancouver.
Teeth is a poetry collection that explores the consequences of colonization and why it continues to repeat itself in today's society. The book also celebrates the successes of Indigenous peoples and looks into the realities they face.
Dawn Macdonald
Dawn Macdonald lives in Whitehorse and studied mathematics and physics at university. Her poetry has been published in The Antigonish Review, Canadian Literature, The Fiddlehead, FOLIO, Grain, Literary Review of Canada and The Malahat Review, among others. Northerny is her first book.
Northerny tells of what it's like to grow up in the North — and the many ways in which the North can be messy, beautiful and painful. This poetry collection breaks free of the perception of the North as a way to enlightenment or escape and gives a Northerner's perspective of growing up and making a living in the region.
Daniel Maluka
Daniel Maluka is an artist and writer from South Africa based in Toronto. Unwashed is his debut poetry collection.
Unwashed is a poetry collection that reflects the author's experience as an immigrant to Canada and the themes of growing up, love and alienation. Image-rich and intense, the poems explore the city of Toronto in a loud and unapologetic manner.
Nic Marna
Nic Marna, also known as @bookbinch, is a Montreal-based writer, reader and content creator. His online platforms are dedicated to championing queer literature. Nic writes a bi-weekly newsletter and is currently finishing his debut novel, a queer coming-of-age that explores how sometimes gay does not mean happy.
Zehra Naqvi
Zehra Naqvi is a Vancouver-based writer who was born in Karachi. She won the 2021 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. She holds degrees in migration studies and social anthropology from Oxford University where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. The Knot of My Tongue is her debut poetry collection.
The Knot of My Tongue uses a variety of poetic forms to capture a cast of characters as they attempt to express the inexpressible, from a new immigrant to Canada trying to speak a new language to the myth of Philomena searching for ways to communicate after her husband cuts off her tongue.
Yusuf Saadi
Yusuf Saadi is a poet from Montreal. He won the Malahat Review's 2016 Far Horizons Award for Poetry for the poem The Place Words Go to Die, which is in his debut poetry collection Pluviophile. Saadi's Pluviophile was a finalist for the 2021 Griffin Poetry Prize. CBC Books named Saadi a writer to watch in 2020.
Pluviophile is a mix of longer sonnets and shorter meditations, all which explore humanity's relationship with divinity and how we value our bodies, our language and how we connect with each other and the greater world.
Matthew Tierney
Matthew Tierney is the author of four books of poetry, including Midday at the Super-Kamiokande which was nominated for a ReLit Award. He is the winner of the 2013 Trillium Book Award for Poetry and is also a recipient of the K. M. Hunter Award and the P.K. Page Founders' Award. He lives in Toronto. Tierney was a reader for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2014.
Lossless is a poetry collection that explores the connection between algorithms and sonnets, viewing the verses as lines of code. It does this all while accessing inherently human experiences of loss of relationships, faith, childhood and people.
Chimwemwe Undi
Chimwemwe Undi is a Winnipeg-based poet, editor and lawyer. She is the Winnipeg Poet Laureate for 2023 and 2024. Undi was longlisted for the 2020 CBC Poetry Prize. 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, among others.
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.
Sheri-D Wilson
Sheri-D Wilson is a Calgary-based writer and artist of 13 books, four short films and three words and music albums. She was appointed to The Order of Canada in 2019 and was the Poet Laureate Emeritus of Calgary from 2018-2020.
The Oneironaut ∅1 is the first book-long epic poem in a trilogy that explores what the future would look like if we couldn't dream. In this speculative account, scientist Rain is drawn to a small group of people who protect the world of illusion and feels compelled to help them bring down the dystopian regime and allow people to dream once again.
