Doom Scroll by Jenny Sampirisi

Jenny Sampirisi has made the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for Doom Scroll.

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 Jenny Sampirisi

Jenny Sampirisi is a Canadian poet, novelist and educator. She is the author of the novel is/was (Insomniac Press) and the performance poem Croak (Coach House Books). She was previously awarded the KM Hunter Artist Award for Literature and has been longlisted for the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize. Sampirisi works as an education developer and lecturer at Toronto Metropolitan University, where she works on initiatives to expand educational access with marginalized communities. 

Entry in five-ish words

"A contemporary freeze response."

The poem's source of inspiration

"Doom Scroll is part of a manuscript in progress of the same name. The inspiration behind this poem stems from a combination of personal grief, environmental concerns, and the overwhelming nature of modern life, particularly the experience of living in a world constantly mediated by technology and digital consumption. My father was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia in February of 2023 and was gone by May. Those months were surreal as I marched along parenting, working, and living while death was the closest to me it had ever been. This poem is, to me, the closest feeling to those months that I could get. 

"The poem also reflects my deep concern for the state of the world. It is inspired by very real, pressing issues of climate change, ecological and social collapse, which are not distant or hypothetical threats but present realities. In Toronto, driving my son to daycare with the sky hazy and orange with not so distant forest fires, or the street outside my apartment flooded amidst a storm stranger than those I remember from childhood, was and is, an existential horror that we must somehow live our lives around. The personal becomes intertwined with the global in this sense — I feel as I am mourning my father, I am also witnessing the collapse of the world around me.

The poem also draws from the emotional toll of parenthood that, somehow, must happen alongside a persistent grief. The death of someone close strips death of abstraction.- Jenny Sampirisi

"The poem also draws from the emotional toll of parenthood that, somehow, must happen alongside a persistent grief. The death of someone close strips death of abstraction. Within the poem is that common yet intense parental fear of losing a child, which is also a fear that exists within a broader context of societal and environmental breakdown. This poem was my way of voicing intimate, personal loss as it blurs within larger, collective anxieties about the future of the world and our ability to protect those we love.

"Doom Scroll is a fusion of my personal grief, the weight of digital consumption, and an awareness of the environmental and societal crises that shape our current reality. To me these cannot be separated. These forces intertwine, creating a sense of dread and inevitability. Through this poem, I hope to invite readers to reflect on how we navigate personal and collective grief in a world where crises — environmental and social — are ever-present, and often mediated through digital platforms."

First lines

In the instant of being aroused
the landscape is pulled inside my palm 
where I hold it like a pear.

We've been sitting at this table or
tables like it.

A small table, wobbly chairs
made of glass and wrought iron 
in a treehouse with a window.

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)