A Blue Filter by Sheryda Warrener

Sheryda Warrener has made the 2020 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for A Blue Filter.

The winner of the 2020 CBC Poetry Prize will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, have their work published on CBC Books and have the opportunity to attend a two-week writing residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Four finalists will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and have their work published on CBC Books.

The shortlist will be announced on Nov. 5 and the winner will be announced on Nov. 12.

About Sheryda Warrener

Sheryda Warrener is the author of two collections of poetry, Hard Feelings and Floating Is Everything. New work has been selected for Best Canadian Poetry and The Next Wave: An Anthology of 21st Century Canadian Poetry, and commissioned by local galleries Artspeak and The Belkin. She teaches in the creative writing program at the University of British Columbia.

Entry in five-ish words

"Glove, field, iris, body, time."

The poem's source of inspiration

"Seeing a worker's cotton glove in a glass case at MashUp: The Birth of Modern Culture at the Vancouver Art Gallery, and being instantly transported back to commuting on trains in Tokyo nearly 20 years ago."

First lines

travelling southbound

8:12 train      book in hand

could be Snow Country or
                  Thousand Cranes

flash in her periphery

she looks up     

from the window
late spring's foreign language

            she looks up 

the book could be The Sound of the Mountain or
            The Old Capital 

gold & white stipple the blue

About the 2020 CBC Poetry Prize

The winner of the 2020 CBC Poetry Prize will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, have their work published on CBC Books and attend a two-week writing residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity. Four finalists will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and have their work published on CBC Books.

The 2021 CBC Nonfiction Prize will open in January. The 2021 CBC Poetry Prize will open in April.