NASRA has made the 2023 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for against a backdrop of horror.

The shortlist will be announced on Nov. 16 and the winner will be announced on Nov. 23.

NASRA is a queer Oromo/Somali multidisciplinary artist rooted in Amiskwaciywaskahikan. Their debut chapbook A God Dance in Human Cloth (Glass Buffalo Publishing) was the co-recipient of the Bp Nichols National Chapbook Award (2017) with other featured work in Halal If You Hear Me (Haymarket Books), Changing the Face of Canadian Literature (Guernica Editions), ATB Financial's Hustle commercial, Women's March YEG and countless rallies, protests and healing spaces. Named Youth Poet Laureate of Edmonton (2016-17) and founder of the Black Arts Matter festival (2016-2020) further proves NASRA's personal artistry and advocacy for Black creativity have always worked in tandem.

"reconciling the burning with the living."

"against a backdrop of horror came from a choreovisualsonic collaboration with two queer/trans Philly artists Angel Shanel Edwards and Juniper Jones a year into COVID-19. As folks burdened by so many intersectional interruptions & barriers, as people who have to be 100xs better to get ¼ of the pie, and as folks now limited to their homes and intimate spaces for inspiration; we were exhausted and decided our mundanity was going to have to be enough. That our everyday survivorship deserved veneration even if these excavations of joy were still only almost luxuries.

"the sky is stuck was a poem I started half-asleep when I was woken up by the strongest orange haze pouring in through my window. I had already been coughing for days and praying about the fires and the people being forced from homes again and again. And how obviously orange the sky was and how it had to be the children calling us to say something, anything, through the fog. I usually wait until I'm fully awake or just scribble a few words in a nearby journal but I got my laptop and didn't finish until it was finished, and that hasn't happened in a very long time. I'm grateful for the land and how loud she was with me."

the mundane is almost a luxury"
after angel shanel edwards

what do i owe this life but my unfettered, unbridled yawn

mouth bent into a brown bears' nest

or the Sun

dancing across a crystallising honey island

on the floor

The winner of the 2023 CBC Poetry Prize will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, a writing residency and have their work published on CBC Books. Four finalists will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and have their work published on CBC Books.

If you're interested in the CBC Literary Prizes, the CBC Nonfiction Prize opens in January and the CBC Poetry Prize opens in April.