Gas Station Coffee by Paula Lemke
CBC Books | Posted: November 7, 2024 2:29 PM | Last Updated: November 7
The Langley, B.C.-based writer is on the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize longlist
Paula Lemke has made the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for Gas Station Coffee.
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 Paula Lemke
Paula Lemke lives in Langley, B.C., and writes poetry and short fiction to keep sane and true. She's been published in Prairie Fire, Grain, Room and won several prizes including first place in the Surrey Int'l Writers' Conference Storyteller's Award. She is a flower child happily going to seed, an eavesdropper, a dreamer, inspired by the landscapes that surround her: the trees, mountains, sea, prairie, wind and clouds, but also the landscape of the heart. And she is grateful for every day that she doesn't go flying off the face of the spinning earth.
Previously, Lemke was longlisted for the 2016 CBC Short Story Prize.
Entry in five-ish words
"Hard night on a bus."
The poem's source of inspiration
"I have been to a gas station like this and have spent a night on a bus and have found myself at different times of my life, contemplating the direction I was going. The transition from one thing to another is often painful, challenging. The rather forlorn gas station bus stop with a mangy dog, a crummy restroom and coffee out of a vending machine reflects the dismal state this character finds herself in as she sets out to reexamine her life."
First lines
Morning comes hard when you spend the
night on a bus trying to sleep because you
don't know where else to go, everyone's
hair wrecked and make-up smudged by
sleeping scrunched on vinyl seats their heads
resting against balled-up sweaters, all of
you together and even the bus itself, like
a living, breathing organism, breathe in together,
now transpire, a certain rhythm.
night on a bus trying to sleep because you
don't know where else to go, everyone's
hair wrecked and make-up smudged by
sleeping scrunched on vinyl seats their heads
resting against balled-up sweaters, all of
you together and even the bus itself, like
a living, breathing organism, breathe in together,
now transpire, a certain rhythm.
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)