Elegy by Mark Wagenaar
CBC Books | Posted: October 31, 2018 7:52 PM | Last Updated: November 1, 2018
2018 CBC Poetry Prize longlist
Mark Wagenaar has made the 2018 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for Elegy.
About Mark
Mark Wagenaar is the author of three award-winning collections of poetry, most recently the Saltman Prize-winning Southern Tongues Leave Us Shining, which contains the 2015 CBC Poetry Prize-winning poem String Theory. A father of two and husband of poet Chelsea Wagenaar, he is an assistant professor at Valparaiso University, in Indiana.
Entry in five-ish words
Dead whale is blown apart.
The poem's source of inspiration
"The recurring phenomena of whales washing ashore."
First lines
Because there's nothing else to be done about a beached fifty-ton body.
Because our imagination failed us, as our language does.
Because the mayor asked you with a grin what do you charge for a charge?
Because he then asked what do you imagine when you set the charges, and you answered grasshopper leaving the window of a blueprint.
You wanted to say name erased from the bottom of a painting.
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.