The finalists for the 2022 Governor General's Literary Award for poetry

Here are the finalists for the 2022 Governor General's Literary Award for poetry.

The Governor General's Literary Awards are one of Canada's oldest and most prestigious literary prizes. 

The prizes, administered by the Canada Council for the Arts, are awarded in seven English-language categories: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, young people's literature — text, young people's literature — illustration, drama and French-to-English translation. Seven French-language awards are also given out in the same categories. 

The Canada Council for the Arts is a partner of the CBC Literary Prizes. The 2023 CBC Short Story Prize is currently open for submissions.

• Calling all writers! The 2023 CBC Short Story Prize is now open

Each winner will receive $25,000. The winners will be announced on Nov. 16, 2022.

The poetry category was assessed by Joe Denham, Stewart Donova and Aisha Sasha John.

You can see the finalists in all seven categories here.

Get to know the poetry finalists below.

Dream of No One But Myself by D.M. Bradford

D.M. Bradford's Dream of No One But Myself, brings together prose poems, verse and photographs to examine the experience and challenges of growing up in a "troubled" mixed-race family in Montreal's South Shore neighbourhood.

Dream of No One But Myself was also a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for best debut book at the League of Canadian Poets awards.

• Griffin Poetry Prize finalist D.M. Bradford's Dream of No One But Myself explores family via words and images

Bradford is a poet, editor and organizer based in Montreal. His work has appeared in The Capilano Review, The Tiny, The Fiddlehead and Carte Blanche. He is also a founding editor of House House Press.

H of H Playbook by Anne Carson

H of H Playbook is about a Greek tragedy called Herakles by the 5th-century BC poet Euripides. According to myth, Herakles, known for being a symbol of "manly violence," returns home after years of creating war. Unsurprisingly, he finds he cannot adjust to a peaceful life and kills his whole family. Before he kills himself, his friend, Theseuse, intervenes, reminding Herakles that his life has value and potential for redemption.

• Anne Carson on writing from the margins of her mind

Anne Carson has won numerous awards and accolades, including a Guggenheim, a Lannan Foundation fellowship and a MacArthur "genius grant." With her 2001 book, The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos, she became the first woman to receive England's T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry. Carson also won Canada's inaugural Griffin Poetry Prize in 2001 for her collection Men in the Off Hours. Her other poetry collections include Autobiography of Red, Antigonick and Red Doc.

LISTEN | Anne Carson discusses her life and work:

The Sunday Edition18:14The catastrophic poetry of Anne Carson (reprise)

We revisit Michael Enright’s 2016 interview with renowned Canadian poet Anne Carson. They spoke about her fascination with grammar and syntax ("the secrets of life are embedded in grammar,") and why she calls writing "an attempt at catastrophe."

Horrible Dance by Avery Lake

Horrible Dance is about gender-based violence that dismantles the received definitions of both gender and violence. These poems navigate personal and political terrain in search of love and show how such a search can be catastrophically derailed. Horrible Dance explores the complexity of harm and points the reader towards compassion, tenderness and solidarity. 

Avery Lake is a writer living in Montreal.

Shadow Blight by Annick MacAskill

Drawing on ancient mythology, Shadow Blight explores the grief and loneliness of pregnancy loss. Interweaving contemporary experience with mythological stories, Annick MacAskill gives new language to often unspeakable pain. 

MacAskill lives in Halifax, where she teaches French language and literature at Saint Mary's University. Her poetry collections include Murmurations and No Meeting Without Body, which was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and shortlisted for the J.M. Abraham Award. 

Shifting Baseline Syndrome by Aaron Kreuter

In his sophomore poetry collection, Shifting Baseline Syndrome, Aaron Kreuter asks both philosophical and satirical questions alike, such as "will the Anthropocene have a laugh track?" or "What is it like to have an acid trip in a portapotty?" Morphing from absurd to sentimental and back again, Kreuter's book demonstrates a human need for answers and for an ending worth watching. 

Kreuter is also the Toronto author of the short story collection You and Me, Belonging and the poetry collection Arguments for Lawn Chairs. You and Me, Belonging won The Miramichi Reader's 2019 "The Very Best Of!" award for short fiction, and was shortlisted for a Vine Award for Jewish Literature in the fiction category.