No Apples and Oranges by Marion Quednau
CBC Books | Posted: November 7, 2024 2:30 PM | Last Updated: November 7
The B.C.-based writer is on the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize longlist
Marion Quednau has made the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for No Apples and Oranges.
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 Marion Quednau
Marion Quednau's work has appeared in various anthologies, including Best Canadian Poetry 2019, edited by Rob Taylor (Biblioasis) and most recently the Fish Anthology 2024 (County Cork, Ireland) with a nod from competition judge, American poet, Billy Collins. Recent publications include a poetry collection, Paradise, Later Years, (Caitlin Press, 2018) and a book of short fiction, Sunday Drive to Gun Club Road (Nightwood, 2021), the title story shortlisted for the Carter V. Cooper Prize and for a 2022 ReLit Award in the Short Fiction category. She is currently completing a second book of poems and a novel entitled, Ruin Everything.
In 2012, Quednau's poem Yesterday, I Looked Inside shortlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize.
Entry in five-ish words
"Fine lines: language become violence."
The poem's source of inspiration
"My poem mentions high school 'hates' when every injustice is intensely felt, everything seeming an injustice. We want to wreak a vengeance on what's been handed to us in our youth. One minute we're still earnest and naive, our ideals curdling in our mouths, then we are suddenly transformed to being ironic, world-weary, acutely aware of our early disappointments.
"I'm a late child of the sixties, inherited the trademark black humour of the time. We were an odd generation, both skittish and nervy, could feel where we were heading: toward a reductive moral landscape with everyone cheating on promises and ideals and getting caught, happily revealing their flaws, selfies galore, no one even seeking forgiveness. Injustice is somehow irredeemable and who cares. That's why the 'proud plagiarist' character pops up in my poem."
First lines
A night off, nothing at stake—
all you want is relief
from the milling of strangers
shouting to be heard
over the timpani of silverware and glasses,
no one convinced of having enough
charm or clout, smart investment
to become famously rich, stay truly married,
and you smiling at a pretty remove
like a canny party clown
working undercover
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)