Thinking of entering the 2023 CBC Poetry Prize? Juror Catherine Graham has some poetic advice for you
The 2023 CBC Poetry Prize is open for submissions until May 31, 2023 at 11:59 p.m. ET
Catherine Graham was recently announced as 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The CBC Poetry Prize recognizes an original, unpublished poem or collection of poems, up to 600 words in length.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, have the opportunity to attend a two-week writing residency at Artscape Gibraltar Point and have their work published on CBC Books.
The 2023 prize is open for submissions until May 31, 2023 at 11:59 p.m. ET.
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.
Graham spoke to CBC Yukon's afternoon radio show Airplay and offered advice to those thinking about entering the CBC Poetry Prize.
Poetry as a lifeline
"The starting point [of my poetry journey] in a very powerful way, was because poetry has been my lifeline. When I was a student at McMaster University, my mother died my first year and then my father died my last year. And in that place of grief, poetry found me.
"I was seeing a therapist and the therapist suggested that I keep a journal. So I started to do that. I started to play with imagery and memory and language ... and I was energized. So it wasn't just letting things on the page and venting, it was participating in something; I worked up the courage to share what I had written with a friend and she said, 'This is poetry.'
"So that's really been the pivotal point of me and poetry, and I'm really grateful for it."
The poem always knows more than you do
"I knew that I wanted to pursue [being a poet]. I knew I had a lot to learn. There was the impulse to participate in it. But then there's so much craft involved — and it's endless. You're always learning. Poetry is slippery and it's mysterious and the poem always knows more than you do. So it's a dance back and forth, but I'm addicted.
To start the poem, sometimes it might come from a line that appears or something that you see.- Catherine Graham
"A lot of it is listening. It's listening to what matters to you. To start the poem, sometimes it might come from a line that appears or something that you see. And then you want to explore these little pulses and currents of energy."
Judging the 2023 CBC Poetry Prize
"Well, if they're submitting, then they're reading poetry because that can teach you so much.
"And then thinking too about the poem is no longer yours in a strange way, because it's such an intimate art. Whether you're writing about intimate things, you're working one-on-one with language and putting all these words together. But then you're letting it go, so it becomes something for the reader.
So let your ear in, read your work aloud to really hone and find those glitches and iron them out.- Catherine Graham
"You're entering something and crafting it to find that balance of what you feel needs to be there — and then what you often do to what's not there has a powerful presence.
"So it's letting the reader into those spaces or the listener."
Having the courage to submit
"I think it's a personal decision. There's the private writing journey where you're working with your words and your particular, in this case, poems.
"But there's a point to where there might be that impulse to put your work out there and to connect and to give yourself that challenge too. And I think just to see it as a personal challenge and opportunity for growth — to see the prize is a deadline — and to hone what you think is your best poem to make it the best it can be.
"That in itself is an accomplishment: that crafting will have taught you something that then you can carry on to your next poem, and your next. So nothing's wasted; it doesn't always have to be the outcome of the prize, it can be the participation in putting your work into that place.
"Also, nothing like a deadline!"
About Put Flowers Around Us and Pretend We're Dead
"I was telling my cousin about this book and she was listening to me. She said, 'So it's kind of like your greatest hits' because she loves music and I thought, 'Well, yeah, I guess it kind of is.'
"I'm not known in such a way for people to know they're my greatest hits, but maybe they're my personal greatest hits. And my editor, Paul Vermeersch, he really helped me.
I'm interested in liminal spaces between things, the real, the imagined, the dream life, the waking life, the present, the past places of tension.- Catherine Graham
"He was the editor for this book. He had poems that he thought should be in and I had poems that I thought should be in. We found that there was room for all of it, and a lot of overlap too.
"I'm interested in liminal spaces between things, the real, the imagined, the dream life, the waking life, the present, the past places of tension — and how sometimes we can't define one from the other and then what hovers in those spaces."
Catherine Graham's comments have been edited for length and clarity.
