Sadiqa de Meijer of Kingston, Ont., is the winner of the CBC Poetry Prize (Jeni Juranics)

Kingston, Ont.’s Sadiqa de Meijer has won the CBC Poetry Prize for her poem Great Aunt Unmarried, a meditative work about an encounter with an elderly relative.

De Meijer was announced as winner of the CBC Writes poetry contest on Tuesday morning, chosen from five finalists overall.

She will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and her poem will be published in the October edition of enRoute Magazine as well as on the Canada Writes website. She will also receive a two-week residency at The Banff Centre’s Leighton Artists’ Colony.

Great Aunt Unmarried is from de Meijer's first poetry manuscript, which is as yet unpublished. Her poetry has previously appeared in various literary journals, as well as in the series The Best of Canadian Poetry in English and the anthology Villanelles. De Meijer also writes short fiction and essays.

“I try to write about what preoccupies me, and that means certain themes [and subjects] recur: distance, displacement, domesticity, intimacy, war,” she says of her work.

“But the choices in writing a poem, for myself anyway, have to do with words and phrases and what each of them conjures. It’s after the first draft that I start to see what I’m getting at.”

Scenes from the winning poem take place in the Dutch province of Friesland and conjure memories of a constrained life lived after the end of the Second World War.

“With telling and resonant detail, Great Aunt Unmarried evokes the relationship between its speaker and three elderly aunts," said the jury of Canadian poets Julie Bruck, Patrick Lane and Dennis Lee.

The remaining finalists, who each receive $1,000, are:

• Stephanie Bolster of Montreal for Long Exposure.
• Emily McGiffin of Smithers, B.C, for Stikine Country.
• Catherine Greenwood of Victoria for The Texada Queen.
• Marion Quednau of Mission, B.C. for Yesterday, I Looked Inside.