Sisters by Carol Thornton

Carol Thornton has made the 2018 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for Sisters.

• 30 writers make longlist for the 2018CBC Poetry Prize

About Carol

Carol Thornton has always imagined other lives. She grew up on the Eagle Valley, Alta.farm homesteaded by her great-grandfatherand began to explore writing at the Saskatchewan Summer School of the Arts, Fort San. She studied Creative Writing at Oxford and received an MA from the University of East Anglia. Her poetry and short stories have been published in literary magazines and anthologies in Canada, England, Ireland, the USA and Romania in translation and won several competitionsand a radio play was broadcast on CBC Radio. She lives and worksin Canmore, Alta.

Entry in five-ish words

Women surviving in brutal circumstances.

The poem's source of inspiration

"I will never forget how brutalized I felt when I learned about some of the methods of enforcement of China's one-child policy. That policy couldn't have been enforced had not ordinary people carried out unjust orders. I listened for the voices of women living out their lives in impossible circumstances. When the policy was relaxed, I thought about the options opening up for women."

First lines

"To be born female . . ." Fu Xuan, 3rd century CE

i.

This is my daughter, Lai Dai.
The committee has us both on their computer,
a record of her birth permit and birth,
my details of conception, contraception,
and the dates of my cycles, from my body's blossoming
the ready egg bursting from its place,
to the shedding of my womb's homely provision.

About the 2018CBCPoetry Prize

The winner of the 2018CBCPoetry Prizewill receive$6,000 from theCanada Council for the Arts, will have their work published onCBC Booksandwill have the opportunity to attend a writing residency attheBanff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Four finalists will each receive $1,000 from theCanada Council for the Artsand have their work published onCBC Books.