Wakanda, Oklahoma by Bertrand Bickersteth
CBC Books | Posted: October 31, 2018 8:15 PM | Last Updated: November 3, 2018
2018 CBC Poetry Prize longlist
Bertrand Bickersteth has made the 2018 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for Wakanda, Oklahoma.
About Bertrand
Bertrand Bickersteth was born in Sierra Leone, raised in Alberta, and has lived in the U.K. and the U.S. Bickersteth is an educator who also writes plays and poems. His poetry has appeared in several publications, including the Antigonish Review, Cosmonauts Avenue and the Fieldstone Review. He lives in Calgary, teaches at Olds College and often (always, actually) writes about black history in Western Canada.
Entry in five-ish words
Black farmers seizing slavery's seeds.
The poem's source of inspiration
"An unexpected advertisement inspired these poems. I became interested in reading the original ads that enticed black families to settle in the Canadian Prairies near the start of the 20th century. I perused a number of newspapers published by and for Oklahoma's black readership, encountering their editorials, absorbing the trivialities of their wanted ads, and relishing over their community issues. Then I came across an ad from Walter Lewis that stopped me short: he was searching for his mother and sisters who had been separated from him during the civil war 25 years earlier. I suddenly realized that my focus had been wrong. These were not my personal symbols to dust off and shake in the faces of the average Albertan who I saw as dismissive of an important strand of the province's history. These were actual people who had lived the aftermath of a brutalizing institution. The contradictions of their resulting aspirations deserved telling. Some of them were desperate to stay. Some of them (my symbols) were eager to leave. And some of them were torn between leaving and simply leading their lives because they had already been torn. Ack!"
First lines
Wakanda Call
Tulsa Star, March 14, 1914
Tulsa Star, March 14, 1914
160 Acre Farms in
Western Canada
Free
Western Canada
Free
Wakanda Math
Beulah Mae reads the ad
many times thinks
it can't be so bad
to add a little clamor
to your glamour.
many times thinks
it can't be so bad
to add a little clamor
to your glamour.
She had some math from school
yet this addition eludes
the soul's abacus,
refutes simple equating
from the inside.
yet this addition eludes
the soul's abacus,
refutes simple equating
from the inside.
About the 2018 CBC Poetry Prize
The winner of the 2018 CBC Poetry Prize will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, will have their work published on CBC Books and will have the opportunity to attend a writing residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Four finalists will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and have their work published on CBC Books.