Spitshine by Britta Badour
2023 CBC Poetry Prize longlist
Britta Badour has made the 2023 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for Spitshine.
The shortlist will be announced on Nov. 16 and the winner will be announced on Nov. 23.
About Britta Badour
Born and raised in Kingston, Ont., Britta Badour, better known as Britta B. is an award-winning artist, public speaker and poet living in Toronto. She is the author of the poetry collection and audiobook, Wires that Sputter. Badour holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Guelph and teaches spoken word performance at Seneca College. Badour was named one of CBC Books' writers to watch in 2023.
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Britta Badour's powerful poetry is inspired by her family, community and her experience of Blackness
Entry in five-ish words
"music : friendship : grief : style : inseparable."
The poems' source of inspiration
"This series is an excerpt of a larger project I'm working on that interrogates the power of friendship, trust with others and self as well as self-betrayal. What happens when someone feels let down? What happens when the person that created the disappointment is the Self?
I am curious to explore how grief and loss shows up in friendship and how friendship can be found in difficult familial events or tragedies.- Britta Badour
"I am curious to explore how grief and loss shows up in friendship and how friendship can be found in difficult familial events or tragedies. I am also interested in how the colon can be stylistic or symbolic — how punctuation (or the loss of its familiarity) affects the intimacy of readership. I feel drawn to experimenting with how my voice appears visually as much as sonically on the page."
First lines
she is so lucky she has me : last week : bathroom with skylight : looking into : not always through : nor out : her short hands could not reach the shaving cream : high enough : she could not razor : herself : so I had a time wincing the blade : earlier in preparation I eat all the chocolates from the Halloween bowl : she reaches and sees all 46 wrappers
About the 2023 CBC Poetry Prize
The winner of the 2023 CBC Poetry Prize will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, a writing residency and have their work published on CBC Books. Four finalists will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and have their work published on CBC Books.
If you're interested in the CBC Literary Prizes, the CBC Nonfiction Prize opens in January and the CBC Poetry Prize opens in April.
