A. Light Zachary has made the 2021 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for Why bury yourself in this place you ask.

Zachary is also on the longlist for Two Girls.

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.

A. Light Zachary is a writer, editor and teacher. They were awarded a fellowship in poetry by the Lambda Literary Foundation and a writing studio fellowship at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Their new chapbook, I build it better, will be released in late 2021. Zachary is autistic and bigender. They live between Toronto and Grande-Digue, N.B.

"A bigender Acadian seaside autobiography."

"After Hurricane Dorian hit New Brunswick in 2019, I wrote the first ten lines on my phone while clearing debris from my family's land. I had just returned from Toronto, where I often present as transfeminine, but back east, I became the dutiful man others needed. I thought of my Acadian ancestors who walked the same paths, wondering, 'How many were like me? Lived as men, simply because there was too much to do?'

"Later, I developed the poem into a sonnet cycle, revisiting the experience in a few different ways while telling stories — both true and fictionalized — to illustrate the role I play in my family. I was inspired by — and borrowed from — Douglas Lochhead's High Marsh Road. I like the idea of 'troubling' the poetic tradition of Serious Man on Maritime Land."

Forms in the salt marsh, clearing hurricane debris

She would never put my sister to this work,
but part of coming home is being what she needs,
and a second daughter
isn't it.

How many
of those who came before me

lived as men, simply
because there was too much to do?

Who thought, whatever I am, this is the form it takes;
put it to use.

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.