Abhirami Senthilkumaran has made the 2023 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for banana blossoms.

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

Abhirami Senthilkumaran was born a Tamilian, married a Konkani-Maharashtrian, and is raising an American in the land of the Coast Salish peoples. Her first published poem was in the Ribbons Journal, Tanka Society of America in fall 2021. Her collection the unbearable heaviness of being zero waste is forthcoming in 2024.

"Handmade, embodied cognition, Earth Day."

"Growing up in South India, banana blossoms were a common part of my diet. When I got married and my spouse discovered the laborious process of extracting the edible parts of these flowers, he declared that no nutrients were worth such arduous work! But after we moved to Canada, we started buying banana flowers from South Asian grocery stores out of nostalgia and teaching our three-year-old son how to cook and eat them.

"Every Earth Day for the past three years, I've been reflecting on work done with one's hands as an antidote to the climate crisis. I want to do and value the labour that goes into sustaining life and practicing a craft. One half of this poem came to me when I was preparing banana flowers for lunch. The other half stemmed from a desire to hold on to the experience of time and self as free-flowing, unbounded, and forever, and the simultaneous feeling that this here and now is enough. While writing, these moments became woven together with the themes of learning across generations, being patient, staying attentive and embracing the cracks in everything."

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.