Net Losses by Mark Milner

2017 CBC Poetry Prize longlist

Image | Mark Milner

Caption: Mark Milner lives and writes in Burnaby, B.C. (Doug Doyle)

Mark Milner has been has made the 2017 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for Net Losses.

About Mark

Mark Milner was born in Vancouver, and moved to Calgary with his family at the age of eight. He attended Crescent Heights High School, and worked as a printer's assistant before attending University of Calgary, where completed a bachelor's degree in English literature. Mark and his wife Adele moved back to the west coast in the mid-1990s, where he completed his master's degree at the University of British Columbia. Mark currently lives, writes and tries to play bass in Burnaby, B.C.

Entry in five-ish words

Intersection of poetics and economics

First lines

And that year
Hardly returned at all, the opening
For two days only, and we took only eight
Sockeye (and some chum)
And didn't even make
The price of fuel. And we blamed
Each other, and we blamed
The Indians, and the government, and
The loggers of watersheds. And we blamed El Niño,
And development on the riverbanks,
And the builders of dams.