Bruce Rice has made the 2022 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for The Magic Tree.

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.

Bruce Rice served as Saskatchewan poet laureate from 2019 to 2021. His most recent collection is The Vivian Poems, on the life and work of street photographer, Vivian Maier. His work has appeared in The Malahat Review, Event, Grain, Prairie Fire, CV2, Arc Poetry Magazine, The Fiddlehead, Antigonish Review and the Dalhousie Review. One of his questions is how we still see beauty in the land, even as we leave out footprints on it. He writes about community, the lives and voices, including the lives of its artists. Bruce lives in Regina on Treaty 4 Territory and the Métis homeland.

Rice previously made the CBC Poetry Prize longlist in 2013 for We Are Approximate Beings Made Proximate By Love; Bone Houses.

"Reading the Group of Seven today — a hundred years later."

"Art has been a huge influence and often the subject of my work. The Group of Seven struggled in their own time, to eventually become salient in the Canada's imagination of itself — at least as it was taught in schools. The Hart House Collection exhibit at the Art Gallery of Alberta, gave me the opportunity to see these artists first hand, to understand their differences, and to test my own responses to the work a hundred years later. I'm aware of recent critiques of the whole idea of 'wilderness' in these works, which I think has some truth to it. But I also know my own story of living close to these places, the struggle behind the art, and the kind of line I am trying to walk as a poet."

Magic Tree
(F. H. Varley, 1926)

Arcs of carmine follow the hills
the forest won't be subdued

no gaunt thought of November
as the painter faces the washstand

soapy water splashed on his whiskers
hands quivering

like wings of a bird
that has flown too far

he turns to the sputtering stove
doesn't know when grace became a tired thing

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.