Some Notes on Intoxication and Simile: Like Butterscotch by Catherine St. Denis

Catherine St. Denis has made the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for Some Notes on Intoxication and Simile: Like Butterscotch and The Killer and the Harpist.

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 Catherine St. Denis

Catherine St. Denis (she/her) lives, writes, sings, teaches, and parents on the unceded territories of the Lekwungen peoples in Victoria. Her work recently appeared in Rattle, The Malahat Review, Grain, Arc, Canthius, and The Humber Literary Review. She was shortlisted for The Far Horizons Award for Poetry, The Fiddlehead's Poetry Prize, The Toronto Arts and Letters Club Poetry Award, and The Foster Poetry Prize. Catherine was a finalist for PEN Canada's New Voices Award in both 2022 and 2023. Her work is featured in Biblioasis' Best Canadian Poetry 2025.

St. Denis is on the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize longlist twice: for Some Notes on Intoxication and Simile: Like Butterscotch and The Killer and the Harpist. 

Entry in five-ish words

"A flawed father's intoxicating influence."

The poem's source of inspiration

"Children marinate in their environments and internalize so much of what happens around them. After my alcoholic dad died a few years ago, I found myself reflecting on how growing up with this very complicated man as a father influenced what I carried into the rest of my life. Inspired by an essay by Lynn Emanuel about how her experience being the daughter of an alcoholic parent later influenced her poetry, I began writing a series of poems riffing off her essay's title, Some Notes on Intoxication and Simile. For each poem, I chose a different simile to describe what it was like to be my father's child. This one — Like Butterscotch — explores the intended and unintended layers of 'sweetness' my father taught me."

First lines

My father was so tall, his legs
entered the future before he did.
He held my small hand as we skipped
merrily down sidewalks, humbug sweets

in our cheeks. A runner, himself,
he'd call out to joggers, Looking good!

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)