Dell Catherall has made the 2020 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for A Garden in the Rain.

The winner of the 2020 CBC Poetry Prize will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, have their work published on CBC Books and have the opportunity to 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. 5 and the winner will be announced on Nov. 12.

Dell Catherall is a retired secondary school teacher-librarian and enthusiastic tap dancer living in Vancouver. Her passion for poetry grew while attending a series of creative writing courses at the University of British Columbia. Her first poem, The Watcher, was published in B.C. Writers' Literary Writes. She has also had poems published in Event. Her poem Fig Sestina was included in the Best Canadian Poetry 2020 in New Quarterly.

"Gardening beauty, despair, violence, hope."

"Voluntary teaching in the Carnegie Centre in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside; my bipolar son; the Columbine massacre."

A camellia tree in the shady corner
by the fence. Ten feet of glossy
evergreen leaves and sturdy pink
flowers. I pick a single bloom,
a gift for a Haida woman
we call Camilla. In class
she prints her real name
Xiilaay, and laughs. Flower,
I'm a flower in a garden.
Graceful fingers stroke waxy petals,
like satin she says, sticks
the camellia behind her ear.

The winner of the 2020 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 the 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 2021 CBC Nonfiction Prize will open in January. The 2021 CBC Poetry Prize will open in April.