If April, then by Tammy Armstrong
CBC Books | Posted: November 10, 2022 1:00 PM | Last Updated: November 10, 2022
Tammy Armstrong has made the 2022 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for If April, then.
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 Tammy Armstrong
Tammy Armstrong has published two novels and five books of poetry. Her most recent collection, Year of the Metal Rabbit, was a finalist for the Atlantic Book Awards' J.M. Abraham Poetry Award and won the inaugural Maxine Tynes Nova Scotia Poetry Award. Her novel-in-progress, Ursula, was a finalist for the 2020 HarperCollins/UBC Prize for Best New Fiction. It won the 2022 competition and will be published with HarperCollins Canada in 2024. She lives in southern Nova Scotia.
Armstrong previously made the CBC Poetry Prize longlist in 2017 for Hermit God Spot.
Entry in five-ish words
"Family, grief, borders, Atlantic weather."
The source of inspiration
Those meandering phone calls kept us connected, despite the border — small sparks inside all that grief and uncertainty. - Tammy Armstrong
"My stepfather died unexpectedly during the pandemic of an unrelated illness. He and my mother lived in Maine while I was in Nova Scotia. Unable to cross the border, I spoke every day to my mother on the telephone during those difficult months. Often those chats were about inconsequential things: the weather, a recipe, the slow oncoming of spring or news from elsewhere, like cold snaps in France. Those meandering phone calls kept us connected, despite the border — small sparks inside all that grief and uncertainty."
First lines
Even this early
April's a slipknot
a slow sail of shadow
darkening the distance
where fallstreaks
fissure the sky's late blue light.
April's a slipknot
a slow sail of shadow
darkening the distance
where fallstreaks
fissure the sky's late blue light.
Out in the folded fields that are not fields now
but vasts of shivering water
deer, gut-sick with madstones, browse at the traces of
at the edges of
things, wet-sided.
but vasts of shivering water
deer, gut-sick with madstones, browse at the traces of
at the edges of
things, wet-sided.
I am so tired
of being cold
the near-thaw of translucent things
the air like pin bones.
of being cold
the near-thaw of translucent things
the air like pin bones.
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.