Britta Badour, Brandi Bird longlisted for all 3 League of Canadian Poets prizes
The $2K awards annually recognize the best in Canadian poetry
Britta Badour's Wires that Sputter and Brandi Bird's The All + Flesh are both longlisted for all three League of Canadian Poets annual book awards.
The organization administers three poetry prizes to celebrate the year's best published works — the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for debut books, Pat Lowther Memorial Award for books by Canadian women and Raymond Souster Award for books by League members. The winner of each prize receives $2,000.
Wires That Sputter is an intimate collection of poetry which plays with form and punctuation. Badour explores pop culture, sports, family dynamics and Black liberation.
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Britta Badour's powerful poetry is inspired by her family, community and her experience of Blackness
Badour, better known as Britta B., is an artist, public speaker and poet living in Toronto. She was also the recipient of the 2021 Breakthrough Artist Award from the Toronto Arts Foundation. She teaches spoken word performance at Seneca College.
She was named one of CBC Books' 2023 writers to watch.
The All + Flesh is a debut collection that explores both internal and external cultural landscapes and lineages from the perspective of a Saulteaux, Cree and Métis writer.
Bird is an Indigiqueer writer from Treaty 1 territory who is currently studying at the University of British Columbia. Their poems have been featured in various publications such as Catapult and Room Magazine. The All + Flesh is their first book.
Other Canadian writers on the longlists include Kai Cheng Thom, Ali Blythe, D.M. Bradford and Hannah Green.
Thom's Falling Back in Love with Being Human is longlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. It's a collection of vulnerable and poetic love letters and a lyrical journey of self-acceptance.
Thom writes poems to those she describes as "lost souls" both within and far from her own lived experiences. She meditates on her own identities as a Chinese Canadian transgender woman in this collection about healing and love.
Thom is a Chinese Canadian writer, artist and activist. Her poetry collection a place called No Homeland was named an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book. Her other books include Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars and I Hope We Choose Love.
Blythe's Stedfast is longlisted for the Raymond Souster Award. It is a poetry collection that takes place over the course of a single night between the poet and a sleeping lover. Inspired by the Romantics like John Keats' Last Sonnet, Stedfast asks questions of love, eros and the illusory.
Blythe is a poet and editor based in Victoria. He has written two previous collections about trans-poetics: Hymnswitch and Twoism.
Bradford's Bottom Rail on Top is longlisted for the Raymond Souster Award. It's a collection of poems which embodies the Black histories of antebellum life and emancipation in America, meditating on lineage and legacy through poetic fragments.
Bradford is a Montreal-based poet and translator. Their other books include Dream of No One but Myself, which won the 2022 A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry and was a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize, and their translated book House Within a House.
Green's Xanax Cowboy is longlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. It's a poetry collection that follows the adventures of the Xanax Cowboy, a pill-popping, whiskey drinking woman with a reputation like a rattlesnake.
Xanax Cowboy won the 2023 Governor General's Literary Award for poetry.
Green is a Winnipeg-based writer and poetry editor. She was a poetry finalist for the 2021 Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers.
The Gerald Lampert Memorial Award is for the best debut book of poetry. The longlist includes:
- Wires That Sputter by Britta Badour
- The All + Flesh by Brandi Bird
- Chores by Maggie Burton
- Celebrate Pride with Lockheed Martin by Jake Byrne
- Xanax Cowboy by Hannah Green
- Crushed Wild Mint by Jess Housty
- The Animal in the Room by Meghan Kemp-Gee
- [about]ness by Eimear Laffan
- Baby Book by Amy Lam
- Archipelago by Laila Malik
- Sonnets from a Cell by Bradley Peters
- More Sure by A Light Zachary
The Pat Lowther Memorial Award recognizes a book by Canadian women and non-binary authors. The longlist includes:
- Wires That Sputter by Britta Badour
- The All + Flesh by Brandi Bird
- the natural hustle by Eva H.D.
- act normal by nancy viva davis halifax
- Crushed Wild Mint by Jess Housty
- Archipelago by Laila Malik
- A Family of Dreamers by Samantha Nock
- No Town Called We by Nikki Reimer
- Vixen by Sandra Ridley
- Selvage by Kate Siklosi
- Falling Back in Love with Being Human by Kai Cheng Thom
- Drank, Recruited by Ami Xherro
The Raymond Souster Award is for the best book by a member of the League of Canadian Poets. The longlist includes:
- Wires That Sputter by Britta Badour
- Uncomfortability by Roxanna Bennett
- The All + Flesh by Brandi Bird
- Stedfast by Ali Blythe
- Bottom Rail on Top by D.M. Bradford
- Beast Body Epic by Amanda Earl
- act normal by nancy viva davis halifax
- Spells, Wishes, and the Talking Dead: ᒪᒪᐦᑖᐃᐧᓯᐃᐧᐣᐸᑯᓭᔨᒧᐤᓂᑭᐦᒋᐋᓂᐢᑯᑖᐹᐣ mamahtâwisiwin,
- pakosêyimow, nikihci-âniskotâpân by Wanda John-Kehewin
- Slows: Twice by T. Liem
- Elementary Particles by Sneha Madhavan-Reese
- Sonnets from a Cell by Bradley Peters
- No Town Called We by Nikki Reimer
This year's League of Canadian Poets award shortlists will be announced on April 17, 2024. Winners will be announced on May 1.
