Chelsea Dingman has made the 2018 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for In Every City, the Trees; The Ex-Fighter Dreams a New History.

Chelsea Dingman's first book, Thaw, was chosen by Allison Joseph to win the National Poetry Series. She is also the author of the chapbook What Bodies Have I Moved. She has won prizes including the Southeast Review's Gearhart Poetry Prize, the Sycamore Review's Wabash Prize, Water-Stone Review's Jane Kenyon Poetry Prize, and The South Atlantic Modern Language Association's Creative Writing Award for Poetry. Her work is forthcoming in Redivider, New England Review and the Southern Review, among others.

Migration, marriage, identity, illness, witness.

"I've been writing a series of poems — I hesitate to call it a collection yet — about my husband's experience as a professional hockey player and our experience as emigrants. What is lost and what is gained by moving around so often? How much of our identities are built in us from a young age, from our first home[lands], from our histories? How much do we gain as we move around the world and carry all of those places with us? These poems are also about the struggle and stigma surrounding brain injury and depression, particularly as hockey is such a revered sport in Canada and men are raised to pretend to be superhuman in a culture of silence."

Tampa

The winner of the 2018 CBC Poetry Prize will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, will have their story 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.