Lions Gate by Erin Soros
CBC Books | Posted: November 10, 2022 1:00 PM | Last Updated: November 10, 2022
Erin Soros has made the 2022 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for Lions Gate.
The shortlist will be announced on Nov. 17 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.
About Erin Soros
A settler born in Vancouver, Erin Soros writes fiction, nonfiction, poetry and critical theory. She researches trauma-induced psychosis and the police and psychiatric response to it. New poetry is forthcoming in Canadian Literature and essays are forthcoming in English Studies in Canada and in Futures of Neurodiversity. Her honours include The Malahat Review Long Poem Prize, inclusion in Best Canadian Poetry 2020, Gold at the National Magazine Awards for One-of-a-Kind-Storytelling and Silver at the National Magazine Awards for poetry.
Soros won the 2005 CBC Short Story Prize for The Chorus and was shortlisted for the 2019 CBC Poetry Prize for You Left Something.
Entry in five-ish words
"Psychiatric segregation restraint memory harm."
The source of inspiration
In contrast to the brutal silencing involved in carceral treatment, I believe poetry teaches us ways of listening with complex attunement to psychic distress. - Erin Soros
"I wanted to communicate the sense of entrapment and psychic disintegration caused by forced drugging, segregation and restraint to a bed, practices that are standard psychiatric treatments within my home province of British Columbia but are actually legal forms of torture. In contrast to the brutal silencing involved in carceral treatment, I believe poetry teaches us ways of listening with complex attunement to psychic distress. I thus see this language as testimony but also transformation — I hope the poem reveals that ruptured syntax and disorienting linguistic patterns can still communicate and should still be heard."
First lines
Straps, cotton and clean as
the ones you use in a yoga
class to tie your body up.
Breathe. But all that feels
the ones you use in a yoga
class to tie your body up.
Breathe. But all that feels
wrong. Another sky slyly
softens the hold, lining
leather with consent as if
she tied herself, all fine
softens the hold, lining
leather with consent as if
she tied herself, all fine
in there, the room, what
does the report? Document
it. Capture it. Paper won't
tell anyone what they used.
does the report? Document
it. Capture it. Paper won't
tell anyone what they used.
About the 2022 CBC Poetry Prize
The winner of the 2022 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 2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize will open in January. The 2023 CBC Poetry Prize will open in April.