April is Poetry Month — acclaimed poet Catherine Graham reflects on why poetry matters, now more than ever

Fresh Air9:21It's time to polish off your iambic pentameter, because the CBC Poetry Prize is accepting submissions!

The CBC Poetry Prize is now accepting submissions, and there’s $6,000 up for grabs! We get some writing tips from Catherine Graham. She is an award-winning poet, novelist and creative writing teacher at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies, and she was a juror for last year's poetry prize. 

Catherine Graham is an award-winning poet and novelist. Her nine books include Æther: An Out-of-Body Lyric, a finalist for the Trillium Book Award, Toronto Book Award and winner of the Fred Kerner Book Award. Published internationally, she co-hosts The Hummingbird Podcast and teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies. Put Flowers Around Us and Pretend We're Dead: New and Selected Poems is her latest book. Graham lives in Toronto, where she teaches creative writing and leads the Toronto International Festival of Authors Book Club.

• The CBC Poetry Prize is open from April 1 to June 1

Graham spoke to CBC's Fresh Air about the importance of poetry and offered advice to those thinking about entering the CBC Poetry Prize.

So let's put you on the spot right off the hop here so you can mix up a couple metaphors. Why does poetry matter?

Why does poetry matter? Well, poetry matters because language matters. Emotions matter. Imagination matters. Image, musicality of words, poetry draws from all of these things and it helps us to see who we are, who we were, who we might become. It engages with mystery. It challenges us. It brings beauty. I think it's endless what poetry can do. That's why I love it so much. 

• Thinking of entering the 2023 CBC Poetry Prize? Catherine Graham has some poetic advice for you

What I love is when you're feeling the emotion of the person who wrote it, but it's not directly from the words. It's something about an emotion being passed to you without instruction. It is there. There's an offering that happens when you're given a poem and in that space things happen. Poetry is about words, but it's also about silence and the spaces between. There's really powerful moments for readers to enter in and find out what that poem means to them.

How can poetry reflect the times we live in?

I think it can't help but do that too because poets are absorbers. They draw from life directly, indirectly, consciously, unconsciously, from dreams, memory, emotions, from the micro to the macro. Poets write about what matters to them, what haunts them. And they're living in the world and the world is living in them as well.

I knew I wanted to study poetry and live with poetry. It's been the core of my life ever since.- Catherine Graham

I know for myself I never had any plans to be a poet. I was going through grief. I was an undergraduate and I'd lost both of my parents very close together. I was seeing a therapist and the therapist suggested that I keep a journal. So I did, and I was always letting things out and having some relationship to what was going on inside me. But one day, I went into this different place. I went into memory and image and I came out and I was energized and I knew the writing was different, too.

When I worked up the courage to share this with a friend, she said, you're writing poems. And of course I knew what poems were, I'd studied them in school. But there was something about the place for me that I just needed to enter in and from that moment, that's when I knew I wanted to study poetry and live with poetry. It's been the core of my life ever since.

You've written seven books of poetry, including your most recent poetry collection called Put Flowers Around Us and Pretend We're Dead. What is it about the process that you love so much?

I love how condensed it is and how silence is part of it. Poetry loves discovering things. You're not necessarily knowing where you're going when you start a poem. When I'm writing, I'm following some kind of current of something that wants to be addressed in some way. Whether it's a line that comes to me, an image, a memory, I can feel it. There's this visceral sort of thing that happens and then I just try and follow it and see what happens in that place of working with words and musicality of words and so on.

So there's that process of writing poetry and then there's the craft of poetry, which is a different part of the writing process and I feel like it uses a different part of my brain. Poetry for me engages with the imagination, that place where as a child I went to and it creates possibility as well. And poems always know more than we do and I find that fascinating. And it's strange to say, but I do believe that. 

Poetry loves discovering things. You're not necessarily knowing where you're going when you start a poem.- Catherine Graham

I think it's necessary to have all those false starts that sometimes create those moments of grace. Then there's other times too, where you feel that you really have a poem and it's important to you, and it just isn't quite going there and so I have some drafts that I go back to and I try again. I think there's a lot of practice involved with poetry too and seeing what happens when you face the blank page.

LISTEN | Catherine Graham on why you should enter the CBC Poetry Prize:

North by Northwest8:39Writing tips for submitting to the CBC Poetry Prize

The CBC Poetry Prize is accepting submissions until June 1st. Former juror and award-winning poet Catherine Graham joins us with writing tips for those who want to enter.

The CBC Poetry Prize is accepting submissions. What are some other tips you would give to aspiring poets who are thinking about entering for the prize?

I think just put every word on trial. Is it needed? Is the beginning compelling? Does the title give away too much? Read the work aloud. Poetry wants to live in the air, so how does it sound? And sometimes too, we need to write ourselves into the poem and then out. If you cut those parts, the beginning and the end, sometimes that's actually where the poet will find that their work is strongest.

Why should those writers out there enter literary contests like the CBC Poetry Prize?

I think if you look at it as an opportunity to meet a deadline, someone will read it. Deadlines force you to put your best work out there. That in itself is an accomplishment. You've worked on a poem, you've made it the best it can be, let it go and then continue writing and continue reading. I think reading poetry is one of the best things a poet can do to help them on their journey and just keep reading and writing and reading and writing and repeat.

LISTEN | Catherine Graham on celebrating Poetry Month:

Saskatchewan Weekend11:05Celebrating Poetry Month with Catherine Graham

We celebrate poetry month and the CBC Poetry Prize by checking in with a former juror. You might say Catherine Graham fell into poetry. She was journalling to cope with the death of both her parents when a friend told her these weren't journal entries. They were poems! She speaks with host Shauna Powers about her passion for poetry and the unconventional ways poems come to her, even in dreams.

Catherine Graham was a juror for the 2023 CBC Poetry Prize alongside Joseph A. Dandurand and Tolu Oloruntoba. 

The CBC Poetry Prize recognizes an original, unpublished poem or collection of poems, up to 600 words in length. There is no minimum word requirement.

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.

The 2024 prize is open for submissions until June 1, 2024 at 4:59 p.m. ET. 

Catherine Graham's comments have been edited for length and clarity.