A Tenuous Life Act, I Lay Dreaming by Sasha Pickering
CBC Books | Posted: November 7, 2024 2:30 PM | Last Updated: November 7
The Halifax writer is on the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize longlist
Sasha Pickering has made the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for A Tenuous Life Act, I Lay Dreaming.
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 Sasha Pickering
Sasha Pickering lives in Kjipuktuk (Halifax). She is the 2023 recipient of CV2's Foster Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for PULP Literature's Magpie Award for Poetry (2024). Sasha is a reader for ONLY POEMS, and her poetry has recently appeared in CV2, The Dodge, and The Dalhousie Review (forthcoming).
Entry in five-ish words
"Wildfires and Wild blueberries."
The poem's source of inspiration
"The poem is an assemblage piece from notes I made over the course of a summer. I was working in northern Ontario and doing what I love, while at the same time feeling a sense of implausibility about the future of that work. The Pyrocene is not a fiction, and this was the summer I came to realize that we are, in fact, living it. There is grief in this. I think climate grief is something that we are now born into; something of a shared inheritance for this world that we don't yet know what to make of — especially now, as we are witness to a world in tremendous crisis."
First lines
A Tenuous Life Act, I Lay Dreaming
The smoke wipes the world away. I take stock of this
newness. For a long time the rain doesn't come, so we wait,
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)