Canada Writes announces the grand prize winner of the CBC poetry prize

Canada Writes, the CBC’s online home for original writing and part of CBC Books, with its partners the Canada Council for the Arts, Air Canada’s enRoute magazine and The Banff Centre, announced this morning the winners of the CBC Poetry Prize. One Grand Prize winner and four runners-up were announced. Winners were selected from over 2,300 poems received from across the country.

In English, The grand prize winner is Sadiqa de Meijer of Kingston, Ont. for “Great Aunt Unmarried.”

The jury was comprised of Canadian poets Julie Bruck, Patrick Lane and Dennis Lee. The jury described her work as follows:

“With telling and resonant detail, ‘Great Aunt Unmarried’ evokes the relationship between its speaker and three elderly aunts. ‘We went for a drive in nature. Two of them tied ivory kerchiefs around their home permanents, while the third muttered a curse on vanity, and we folded into a sedan…’ The sequence speaks in a deceptively quiet voice, with an assurance which catches the poignancy of these maiden ladies’ lives. Both tender and funny, the poems fulfill Octavio Paz’s demand of poetry – they ‘resurrect presences.”

Sadiqa de Meijer’s poetry, short stories and essays have appeared in a number of literary journals, as well as in the Best of Canadian Poetry in English series and in the anthology Villanelles. “Great Aunt Unmarried” is a selection from her first poetry manuscript. Born in Amsterdam and raised in various places, she lives with her family in Kingston.

Sadiqa will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, and her prizewinning poem “Great Aunt Unmarried” will be published in the October edition of enRoute Magazine and on the Canada Writes website. She will also receive a two-week residency at The Banff Centre’s Leighton Artists’ Colony.

To find out the French-language winner, please visit www.Radio-Canada.ca/zonedecriture.

The winners will be celebrated at the International Festival of Authors in Toronto this fall. The public is invited to come hear Sadiqa de Meijer read from her work as part of an event held during CBC Day at IFOA (Saturday, October 20 at 4 p.m.).

The four runners-up for the CBC Poetry Prize were also announced this morning. They are:

Stephanie Bolster of Montreal, Que. for “Long Exposure”

Catherine Greenwood of Victoria, B.C. for “The Texada Queen”

Emily McGiffin of Smithers, B.C. for “Stikine Country”

Marion Quednau of Mission, B.C. for “Yesterday, I Looked Inside”

Each runner-up will receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts. All poems are available to be read on the Canada Writes website.

For more information on the awards, please visit http://www.cbc.ca/canadawrites