Mark Wagenaar wins the 2015 CBC Poetry Prize

Mark Wagenaar has won the 2015 CBC Poetry Prize for "String Theory."

As the grand prize winner, Wagenaar will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and his poem will be published in Air Canada enRoute magazine. He will also receive a 10-day writing residency at The Banff Centre.

The jury was composed of writers Karen Solie, Fred Wah and Shane Book. Here's what they had to say:

"Mark Wagenaar's 'String Theory' lifts the poetic sentence into a three-dimensional collage of nostalgia and reflection, a composition of intriguing images full of surprise and acuity. The natural economy of its language feels expansive, and a tension develops in the lines' momentum, a controlled energy. Precisely calibrated accelerations made of equal parts song and knowledge propel this poem 'out of the sun.'"

Originally from Grimsby, Ontario, Wagenaar now lives in Denton, Texas. His first book of poetry, Voodoo Inverso, won the University of Wisconsin Press' Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry. His second book, The Body Distances, is forthcoming in the spring of 2016.

The French winner of the Prix de poésie 2015 was also announced. Find out more here.