Francine Merasty has made the 2021 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for Lunch at Pine Valley Indian Reservation.

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.

Francine Merasty a lawyer, poet and is a member of the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation from Pelican Narrows, Sask. She is the author of the poetry collection Poetry of a Northern Rez Girl. She holds a Bachelor of Arts and a Juris Doctor from the University of Saskatchewan. Merasty began writing poetry while working for the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls as a way to cope with the trauma associated with being a witness to horrific events. Her poems have been published in the Alaska Quarterly Review, the Polyglot Magazine, Briarpatch Magazine and The Best American Poetry 2021. She currently lives in Saskatoon.

"Childhood, soap operas, family, lunch, juxtaposition."

"Childhood lunches at home in the '80s and '90s on the reserve, my mother loved her soap operas and the lives I had seen on television were so far from our reality living on an Indian reserve in northern Saskatchewan."

Adam Chandler is in a love triangle.
Kraft dinner and wieners on the stove
Bannock cooling on the counter-top,
She cooks for all her children.
Miles away Erica Kane is getting ready for another ball,
Wearing a sequined sparkly dress, matching clutch.
20 minutes to eat, 10 to clean and 10 to go
Pine Valley's got another doctor, thick wavy hair tanned
I scoop a cup of water from the cistern in the corner
Pickle jar for a cup.

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.