Lisa Baird has made the 2023 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for The Patron Saint of Plastics Gets Dressed for a Party at the End of the World.

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

Lisa Baird is a queer poet, essayist, and community acupuncturist living on the territories of the Attawandaron/Chonnonton peoples, which is also the treaty land of the Mississaugas of the New Credit and part of Dish with One Spoon territory (Guelph, Ont.). Her poetry has appeared in various journals including Arc, Rattle, and Plenitude and was longlisted for the 2020 CBC Poetry Prize for Field Guide. Her first book, Winter's Cold Girls, was shortlisted for the 2020 Relit Award for poetry.

"Common magics and precious wreckage."

"The two poems are from a series inspired by the complex syncretizations — the smashed-togetherness — of Catholic practice and folk religion through which local deities become Catholic saints. I wonder what accommodations my distant ancestors made, or were forced to make, in order to maintain relationships with spirits of land and place, even as sacred wells and groves became church grounds. This project is sharpening my focus on the intimate, the intricate, and the ordinary — what poet Bronwen Wallace referred to as common magic.

"I was moved to write about the Patron Saint of the Former Landfill after spending time at the decommissioned Eastview Landfill in Guelph, the site of artist Christina Kingbury's ReMediate project. ReMediate began as a creative collaboration between Christina, writer Anna Bowen and pollinator conservation organization Pollination Guelph, involving a half-acre seed paper quilt sewn on the landfill site that disintegrated to become a public garden for pollinators. It's an incredibly special place. The first time I visited I knew there was a poem waiting there.

"After spending so much time at ReMediate thinking about garbage and the sacred, I delighted in imagining the Patron Saint of Plastics as a fluid, morphing, queer character—chaotic, powerful, and tender, ultimately delivering a message of salvation. (I write about plastics in the plural to recognize that they have different forms of manufacturing, different levels of toxicity, and uses that range from convenience to medical necessity.)"

Glinting with sequins, tossing a faux-feather boa
over a bare shoulder,
blue glitter teardrops beneath each eye.

Cartwheeling in salt-water gyres,
pirouetting in deep time. Disintegrating.
Born as a confluence of single-celled creatures

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.