Lana Kouchnir has made the 2023 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for Birch Water Harvest.

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

Lana Kouchnir is a Ukraine-born, Toronto-based actor and multidisciplinary artist. Her artistic practice centers themes of queer femininity; immigration; traditional Ukrainian spirituality; Russian colonization; and the countering of Russian colonial propaganda narratives enshrined into western arts, academic and media institutions.

"Intergenerational trauma of Russian colonization."

"Birch Water Harvest explores themes of grief, Ukrainian ancestral protection and the intergenerational trauma of over three centuries of ongoing Russian colonization against Ukraine.

"Russia's full-scale, genocidal re-invasion of my homeland prompted me to re-affirm my responsibility as a Ukrainian artist: To grieve loudly. My writing allows me to do so in naming the impacts and mechanisms of ongoing Russian colonization. That is, my grief documents Russia's vast colonial legacy in ways that are too loud for the Russian colonial imaginary. My grief disturbs the Russians who cowardly evade collective responsibility for ongoing Russian colonization. My grief honours my living and dead ancestors with the Ukrainian language, ceremonies, traditions, and music banned by Russians throughout history."

To mark a child: Under watch of Carpathian birch forest,
lineage of bruises gashed against silver birch,

Pluck the child's desperate vein, puncture into dead bark.
Train the child to kneel below a sugared trickle.

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.