Justin Timbol has made the 2021 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for Table Manners.

The winner of the 2021 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. 18 and the winner will be announced on Nov. 24.

If you're interested in the CBC Literary Prizes, the CBC Nonfiction Prize opens in January and the CBC Poetry Prize opens in April.

Justin Timbol spent the last four years in Windsor studying other subjects before returning to Mississauga, Ont. to write. His work has most recently appeared in the Maynard, Maganda Magazine and Wandering Autumn Magazine. He is currently a student at the Humber School for Writers.

"Cultural confusion, but also hope?"

"Of all the ways we cultivate bonds with our families and heritage, I think cooking may be the strongest and most accessible. Food is one of our links to the past, but there are still many extenuating circumstances that can fracture the relationships we build with our culture.

"I think there is a very real concern that being enveloped in a western society might dilute ethnic origins, and while we're growing into a world that is making the effort to be culturally progressive, I think the scars of the past are still present, specifically in old media. I do, however, believe that with recent media representation focused on celebrating Asian culture, there is also an influx of hope for the future. Also, re: the first lines, my hands are very similar to my mother's, like eerily so."

My hands have and will always curl and crease like my mothers,
but making spring rolls is when we discover that mine

are more tuned towards rolling pens between fingers
bleeding ink blots than tucking little piggies into their beds.

And when the sun too has called it a day, we take stock of the finished product
rendering a dichotomy of those that can be salvaged and those which cannot.

She says they may all look different though none are ugly,
that they all serve the same purpose:

to feed the village is to remember what we come from.

The winner of the 2021 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 2022 CBC Nonfiction Prize will open in January. The 2022 CBC Poetry Prize will open in April.