Eleanor Peebles has made the 2019 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for crux.

The winner of the 2019 CBC Poetry Prize will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, have their work published on CBC Books and attend a two-week 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.

The shortlist will be announced on Nov. 14, 2019. The winner will be announced on Nov. 21, 2019.

Eleanor Marlatt Peebles lives in Toronto and is a student in her last year of high school. She has four sisters, a cat and too many books in her room, as well as far too many parents. Eleanor fosters animals with her family, much to the consternation of her cat Lestat.

Nature as the first home.

"I used to go to my grandmother's cottage, a log cabin with no running water or electricity. I remember the buzz of the propane lamps and the grasshoppers, and how I would lie in the moss and read for hours, feeling like the whole world was folded around me in a sweet, if ominous, package."

and there are days when all I can think of is the lake in the morning

eggshell peace.

blue sky stretched thin and neonate,
membrane of a child
air a mother's embrace.

how my feet break the surface, the dangle of them,
toes pale beneath the greenish water,
the brackish taste and brine of it when i go under, mouth open

morning a linen sheet over the lake, the edge of cold, crisp like an apple slice
wan mist dissipating; in the distance, tucked snug around an almost-silent canoe,
a green sliver drifting on the far side of the lake.