Hector Jenkins has made the 2023 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for These are only the names from Manitoba.

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

Hector Jenkins is a young Indigenous creative who was the 2022-23 winner of The Daniel Whittaker-Van Dusen Prize for Emerging Poets from York University. While the focus of his undergraduate degree is film production, he minors in creative writing. He is also a musician and singer/songwriter who has a forthcoming album to be released in the new year.

"Exploration of two warring identities."

"I wanted to explore the complexity of my personal identity as an Anishinaabe man with a European father. I've often thought about how these two identities are so opposing of each other. I wanted to experiment with writing about all of the conflicts that arise when these identities clash and the alienation that can be caused by feeling caught between cultural worlds."

These are only the names from Manitoba left sitting in church basements and the minds of those whom they left behind after death. These are only the names of the dead in Manitoba, structured into a poem about the personal war waged between the contrasting identities of Hector Mukwa and William Jenkins.

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.