The best Canadian poetry of 2024
Here are the CBC Books picks for the top Canadian poetry of the year!
Scientific Marvel by Chimwemwe Undi
Scientific Marvel is a poetry collection that looks into the history of and current life in Winnipeg. With humour and surprise, it delves into deeper themes of racism, queerness and colonialism while keeping personal lived experiences close to the page.
Scientific Marvel won the 2024 Governor General's Literary Award for poetry.
Chimwemwe Undi is a Winnipeg-based poet, editor and lawyer. She was the Winnipeg poet laureate for 2023 and 2024. She won the 2022 John Hirsch Emerging Writer Award from the Manitoba Book Awards and her work can be found in Brick, Border Crossings, Canadian Literature and BBC World. Undi was longlisted for the 2020 CBC Poetry Prize.
Gay Girl Prayers by Emily Austin
Gay Girl Prayers is a poetry collection that reclaims Catholic prayers and passages from the Bible to empower young women and members of the LGBTQIA+ community. At once sassy and funny, this book celebrates cultural and societal differences.
Emily Austin is an Ottawa-based writer. Her debut novel, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead, was longlisted for The Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour and shortlisted for the Amazon First Novel Award and the Ottawa Book Award. Her second book is Interesting Facts About Space.
The Seventh Town of Ghosts by Faith Arkorful
The Seventh Town of Ghosts explores these titular towns through songs that help readers grapple with the challenges of existence and independence. The book offers insight into the power of connection, tenderness and the human spirit.
Faith Arkorful has had her work published in Guts, Peach Mag, Prism International, Hobart, Without/pretend, The Puritan and Canthius, among others. She was a semi-finalist in the 2019 92Y Discovery Contest. Faith was born in Toronto, where she still resides. In 2020, she was shortlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize.
Teeth by Dallas Hunt
Teeth is a poetry collection that explores the consequences of colonization and why it continues to repeat itself in today's society. The book also celebrates the successes of Indigenous peoples and looks into the realities they face.
Dallas Hunt is Cree and a member of Wapsewsipi (Swan River First Nation) in Treaty Eight territory in northern Alberta. His children's book, Awâsis and the World-Famous Bannock, illustrated by Amanda Strong, was nominated for several awards and was one of the 2024 CBC Kids Reads contenders. Hunt lives in Vancouver.
The Work by Bren Simmers
The poems in The Work explore the themes of loss and grief and how one can make themselves whole again after being broken. From the sudden death of her father, her mother's dementia and her sister-in-law's terminal illness, Simmers' poems show us how healing can come from love.
The Work was the 2024 Governor General's Literary Award for poetry.
Bren Simmers is the author of four books, including the wilderness memoir Pivot Point and Hastings-Sunrise, which was a finalist for the Vancouver Book Award as well as a collection of poetry titled If, When. Simmers won the 2022 CBC Poetry Prize for her poetry collection Spell World Backwards, which is included in The Work. She was previously longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2013 and in 2012 for Science Lessons.
Precedented Parroting by Barbara Tran
The poems in Precedented Parroting explore themes of loss, the natural world, Asian stereotypes and our feathered friends. It's also a book about survival through generations and how both loss and feathers can enable and necessitate flight.
Precedented Parroting was a finalist for the 2024 Governor General's Literary Award for poetry.
Born in New York City, Barbara Tran is a poet whose work has appeared in Women's Review of Books, Ploughshares and The New Yorker. Honours include a MacDowell Colony Gerald Freund Fellowship, Pushcart Prize and Lannan Foundation Writing Residency. She was longlisted for the 2018 CBC Nonfiction Prize. She currently lives in Toronto.
The All + Flesh by Brandi Bird
The All + Flesh is a debut collection that explores both internal and external cultural landscapes and lineages from the perspective of a Saulteaux, Cree and Métis writer.
The All + Flesh won the 2024 Indigenous Voices Award for poetry and was shortlisted for two League of Canadian Poets prizes.
Bird is an Indigiqueer writer from Treaty 1 territory who is currently studying at the University of British Columbia. Their poems have been featured in various publications such as Catapult and Room Magazine. The All + Flesh is their first book.
Sonnets from a Cell by Bradley Peters
In his debut collection, Sonnets from a Cell, Bradley Peters writes from personal experiences as a young man in the Canadian prison system. Combining lyrical verse with inmate speech, Sonnets from a Cell offers empathy and grace within moments of isolation and fear.
Sonnets from a Cell won the Raymond Souster Award and was a finalist for the 2024 Governor General's Literary Award for poetry.
Peters is a poet and actor currently based in Mission, B.C. His poetry has been featured in numerous literary magazines. Sonnets from a Cell is his debut poetry collection.
The Sky Above by Marty Gervais
The Sky Above is a selection of poems from the perspective of a writer who crafts a story in many forms, be it journalism, photography or poetry. Canadian poet Marty Gervais's book tells everyday stories of being a father, weathering storms and occasionally talking to people like Mother Teresa in a Detroit church basement.
Gervais is an Ontario journalist, poet, playwright, historian, photographer and editor. In 2018, he was nominated as the City of Windsor's Poet Laureate Emeritus. He is founder of Black Moss Press, one of Canada's oldest literary publishing firms, and is managing editor of The Windsor Review.
South Side of a Kinless River by Marilyn Dumont
Tackling the way Métis identity has been ignored and suppressed by the nation through poetry, South Side of a Kinless River is a collection focused on the voice of Marilyn Dumont. Closely looking at history, topics such as land loss, midwifery of Indigenous women and the relationships between Indigenous women and European men, the poems of this collection give voice to Métis women, the violence they are subjected to and the knowledge they hold.
Dumont is an Edmonton-based poet of Cree Métis descent. Dumont's other works include Green Girl Dreams Mountains, The Pemmican Eaters and A Really Good Brown Girl, which is about Dumont coming to understand and embrace her Métis heritage. A Really Good Brown Girl won the 1997 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award.
The Sky is a Sky in the Sky by Stuart Ross
The Sky is a Sky in the Sky is a collection of miscellaneous poems including one-line poems, prose and a remix of poetry by Stuart Ross's friend Nelson Ball. Infused with humour, this collection imagines the poet's many lives and the grief he endures.
Stuart Ross is an Ontario writer, editor and teacher. He is the author of several books of poetry, fiction and essays including You Exist, Pockets and A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent. He won the 2023 Trillium Book Award for his memoir The Book of Grief and Hamburgers.
The Flesh of Ice by Garry Gottfriedson
Dedicated to survivors of Kamloops Indian Residential School (KIRS) and all residential schools in Canada The Flesh of Ice is a collection of poems and personal narratives of writer Garry Gottfriedson of the Secwépemc (Shuswap) First Nation. Where Gottfriedson's last collection Bent Back Tongue discussed the history of Indigenous people in Canada as affected by the government of Canada and the Catholic Church, this book describes the lived realities of those who attended KIRS, citing their pain, their resilience and their necessary voices.
Gottfriedson is from Kamloops, B.C. He is strongly rooted in his Secwépemc (Shuswap) cultural teachings. In the late 1980s, Gottfriedson studied under Allen Ginsberg, Marianne Faithfull and others at the Naropa Institute in Colorado. He is the author of 13 books, including Skin Like Mine and Clinging to Bone. Gottfriedson received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) in 2023.
Gottfriedson was a juror for the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize.
I Hate Parties by Jes Battis
I Hate Parties is a collection of 50 poems on Jes Battis' experiences of being queer, autistic and nonbinary. Focusing on the feelings of intense anxiety that come with growing up in the nineties in Canada as a marginalized person, Battis writes of adolescence, queer parties and panic attacks through metaphor and honest verse.
Battis is a queer autistic writer and teacher at the University of Regina, splitting their time between the prairies and the west coast. They wrote the Occult Special Investigator series and Parallel Parks series. Battis' first novel, Night Child, was shortlisted for the Sunburst Award. Their novel The Winter Knight was on the Canada Reads 2024 longlist.
Permission to Settle by Holly Flauto
In a collection of autobiographical poems Permission to Settle highlights the often impersonal and nerve-wracking experiences of immigration processes from applying to moving and then feeling a lack of belonging in your new home. The poet confronts what it means to be a settler in Canada and the colonial structures at work through playful and telling verse.
Originally from the U.S, Holly Flauto currently lives in Vancouver. Flauto is a writer and poet who teaches English and Creative Writing at Capilano University. Their writing has previously been published in The ex-Puritan, Joyland and The Rusty Toque.
echolalia echolalia by Jane Shi
echolalia echolalia a collection of poems focus on the body politic and the experiences of being queer, disabled and in the diaspora. Reflecting on her own identities, author Jane Shi writes about chosen family and resisting colonial projects and ideologies that seek to dehumanize.
Jane Shi is a writer and poet based in B.C. Her writing has appeared in the Disability Visibility Blog and Queer Little Nightmares: An Anthology of Monstrous Fiction and Poetry. Shi graduated from the Writer's Studio Online program at Simon Fraser University and StoryStudio Chicago. She is the winner of The Capilano Review's 2022 In(ter)ventions in the Archive Contest.
Talking to Strangers by Rhea Tregebov
Talking to Strangers is a poetry collection that explores new encounters with people and objects. As is characteristic of celebrated poet Rhea Tregebov, the book dabbles in the art of recollection and elegy with skill and tenderness.
Talking to Strangers won the poetry prize for the 2024 Canadian Jewish Literary Awards.
Tregebov is a Vancouver-based poet, novelist and children's writer. She's written seven books of poetry and two novels, including Rue des Rosiers, and has won the J. I. Segal Award, the Nancy Richler Memorial Prize for Fiction, the Malahat Review Long Poem Prize, the Pat Lowther Award and the Prairie Schooner Readers' Choice Award.
West of West Indian by Linzey Corridon
West of West Indian is a poetry collection that explores the Queer Caribbean experience, both the pain and pleasure, as an individual and a collective. It dives into themes of love and autonomy using language that is often used to unsettle queer life.
Linzey Corridon is a writer and educator. He was born in the Caribbean and he now lives in Canada.
A Year of Last Things by Michael Ondaatje
A Year of Last Things is Michael Ondaatje's long-awaited return to poetry. Drawing on his personal experiences, this collection goes back in time to all the borders that he's crossed with imagery at once witty, moving and wise.
Ondaatje is a Canadian literary icon. His novels and poetry have earned international acclaim, and he was the first Canadian ever to win the Man Booker Prize — in 1992, for the wartime story The English Patient. Born in Sri Lanka and educated in England, Ondaatje moved to Canada when he was 18 to attend university.
Ondaatje began his writing career in 1967 as a poet, winning two Governor General's Literary Awards for poetry before turning to fiction. Over his career, he's won the Giller Prize, the Governor General's Literary Award and France's prestigious Prix Medicis.
In 1982, Ondaatje won the CBC Short Story Prize.
Oh Witness Dey! by Shani Mootoo
With no record of how they got there and where they're originally from, Shani Mootoo's great-great-grandparents were brought to Trinidad by the British. Oh Witness Dey! discusses the concept of "origin" through an exploration of history, displacements and legacy, starting with her own.
Mootoo is a writer and visual artist who currently lives in Ontario. Her debut novel was 1997's Cereus Blooms at Night. Her novel Polar Vortex was shortlisted for the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her other books include the novels Cane | Fire, Moving Forward Sideways like a Crab and Valmiki's Daughter. In 2022, she won the Writers' Trust Engel Findley Award for fiction writers in the middle of their career.
Barfly by Michael Lista
At once hilarious and raw, Barfly uses Byronic rhymes and Auden's meters to discuss twenty-first century topics.
Michael Lista is a Toronto-based poet and journalist, whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Slate, The Walrus and Toronto Life. He is the author of several books of poetry and a collection of essays. Lista was the winner of the 2020 National Magazine Award Gold Medals for both Investigative Reporting and Long Form Feature Writing. His story, The Sting, is being adapted into a television series for Apple TV+.
