2014 CBC Poetry Prize winner announced
David Martin, a Calgary poet and literacy instructor, is the 2014 CBC Poetry Prize winner.
His poem Tar Swan was chosen by the jury from more than 2,500 entries submitted from across Canada, the CBC revealed Monday morning.
For winning the grand prize, Martin will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, and his poem will be published in the October edition of Air Canada’s enRoute magazine. Martin will also receive a two-week writing residency at The Banff Centre and will be honoured at the International Festival of Authors in Toronto as part of the Poet Summit on Oct. 25.
The jury, which featured award-winning poets Roy Miki, Rachel Rose and Katherena Vermette, said that Martin’s work "urgently speaks to central concerns of our time, particularly here in Canada: the consequences of coal and oil extraction, environmental degradation, and our responsibility to the natural world."
The four runners-up for the CBC Poetry Prize are Laurie D. Graham (London, ON) for Settler Education, Basma Kavanagh (Brandon, MB) for Coda Cynthia Woodman Kerkham (Victoria, BC) for Burnt Pot, Riverbank, Indifferent Sky and Alessandra Naccarato (Vancouver, BC) forCoyote Medicine/Medicine Coyote. Each runner-up will receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts.
To read Tar Swan and the other finalists, visit CBCBooks.ca.
The French-language grand prize winner was also announced Monday morning: Montreal’s Marc-André Moutquin won for L’appétit des astres. More information can be found at ICI.Radio-canada.ca/litterature.
The CBC is currently accepting entries for its annual Short Story Prize until Nov. 1.
