Brad Aaron Modlin has made the 2023 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for This Story Ends with Nothing Quite Landing on Us.

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

Brad Aaron Modlin's viral poetry has been experienced nearly two million times in social media posts, podcasts, religious reflections and elsewhere. His poetry is often about hope or embarrassment because he believes in humans' goodness and is very clumsy at the gym. His novel manuscript is about long-dead people we recognize ourselves in. An associate professor/endowed chair of creative writing, he teaches (under)grads in-person and online and curates his university's visiting writer series. When an art gallery commissioned him to create a four-word poem about empathy for a New York City rooftop, he wrote: Always sunrise, sunset somewhere. Modlin was longlisted for the 2022 CBC Poetry Prize for Pink Fairy Armadillo and was shortlisted for To the Astronaut Who Hopes Life on Another Planet Will Be More Bearable.

"Nervously, we leave her hospital."

"Though we have no easy answers, sometimes within turbulent seasons we can support each other. Within pain, isolation, or struggles with mental health, there can be moments of pause and light. This poem records such a moment."

and begins
at the glass door of the hospital that gives Mac permission to leave
for the afternoon so she and I, her out-of-town visitor, can laugh
about normal things like the impossible claims of radio commercials

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.