Score Before Cutting by Claire Gordon
CBC Books | Posted: November 7, 2024 2:30 PM | Last Updated: November 7
The B.C. writer is on the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize longlist
Claire Gordon has made the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for Score Before Cutting.
The winner of the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, a two-week writing residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and have their work published on CBC Books. The four remaining finalists will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and have their work published on CBC Books.
The shortlist will be announced on Nov. 14 and the winner will be announced on Nov. 21.
If you're interested in the CBC Literary Prizes, the 2025 CBC Nonfiction Prize opens in January and the 2025 CBC Poetry Prize will open in April.
About Claire Gordon
Claire Gordon is a West Coast writer and film photographer. She is a settler of Celtic, French, and Eastern European ancestry. Her history navigating the backcountry sparked an eco-feminist attention, leading to her curiosity of human interaction with the natural world. She explores connecting to place through narrative poetics and still life (35mm). Claire was the recipient of Arc's "Award of Awesomeness" in July 2024 and her previous work has appeared in Sea & Cedar Magazine and Portal Magazine.
Entry in five-ish words
"Contemporary feminism. Tender, brawny, muscular."
The poems' source of inspiration
"Score Before Cutting was inspired by my personal experiences working in the backcountry of Vancouver Island's Provincial Parks: building concrete forms for a remote bridge installation, clearing windfall, building boardwalk and assessing hazard trees. The poems are interested in gender within the container of blue-collar industry. They juxtapose the desire to preserve the land and the equipment used to venture deeper into it."
First lines
My feet hurt
I exit the trail and walk
back down the logging road
the spring rain is a sweet fragrant seal
balmy resin, pitches droplets
from evergreen needles
down my neck
I exit the trail and walk
back down the logging road
the spring rain is a sweet fragrant seal
balmy resin, pitches droplets
from evergreen needles
down my neck
Check out the rest of the longlist
The longlist was selected from more than 2,700 submissions. A team of 12 writers and editors from across Canada compiled the list.
The jury selects the shortlist and the eventual winner from the readers' longlisted selections. This year's jury is composed of Shani Mootoo, Garry Gottfriedson and Emily Austin.
The complete longlist is:
- Borderland by Howard Anglin (Calgary)
- on the last day of ramzan, the moon makes the sun in its image by Manahil Bandukwala (Ottawa)
- Lament by Jessica Bebenek (Montreal)
- Citrus Dreams by Elena Bentley (Clavet, Sask.)
- When it's 9:48pm and the kids are asleep and you realize you've spent the entire night on your phone by Nicole Boyce (Calgary)
- ABC Gum by Devlin (Halifax)
- scar/city I by Daniela Elza (Vancouver)
- I Thought I Might by Tamsyn Farr (Wakefield, Que.)
- Score Before Cutting by Claire Gordon (Ucluelet, B.C.)
- There is no neutral way to say I was fourteen by Cicely Grace (Vancouver)
- After Icebergs by Matthew Hollett (St. John's)
- a house in O's name by Eimear Laffan (Nelson, B.C.)
- Gas Station Coffee by Paula Lemke (Langley, B.C.)
- magdalene sonnets by Louie Leyson (Vancouver)
- 吃苦 (Eat the Bitterness) by Emily Yiling Ma (Burnaby, B.C.)
- Kananaskis by Kathleen McCracken (Belfast, Northern Ireland)
- A Tenuous Life Act, I Lay Dreaming by Sasha Pickering (Halifax)
- Regeneration and other poems by Katherine Poyner (Nanaimo, B.C.)
- Girls of the Now by Dora Prieto (Vancouver)
- No Apples and Oranges by Marion Quednau (Sechelt, B.C.)
- i'll expect big things from the moon later tonight by c. a. r. rafuse (Ottawa)
- Song for the Earth and the Water by Harold Rhenisch (Vernon, B.C.)
- Palimpsest County by Rachel Robb (Toronto)
- Doom Scroll by Jenny Sampirisi (Toronto)
- Northern Childhood by Eleonore Schönmaier (Ketch Harbour, N.S.)
- Some Notes on Intoxication and Simile: Like Butterscotch by Catherine St. Denis (Victoria)
- The Killer and the Harpist by Catherine St. Denis (Victoria)
- The Rupture by Ayşe Lara Yildirim (Toronto)