Vancouver poet Lise Gaston wins 2021 CBC Poetry Prize

Lise Gastonhas won the2021CBC Poetry PrizeforJames.

She will receive $6,000 from theCanada Council for the Artsand will also attend a writing residency at theBanff Centre for Arts and Creativity.

Gaston's winning poem was published onCBC Books.You can readJameshere.

Gaston'sworkwas selected from nearly 3,000 English-language entries.

Gaston was born in Toronto and raised in Fredericton and Victoria. She received a BA from the University of Victoria and a MA from Concordia University in Montreal. Before moving to Vancouver, she lived in Edmonton for three years. Gastontaught English at the University of British Columbia for two years.

She said that she wrote Jamesin hopes that her poemcould speak to other parents who have also endured the loss of a child.

"I think it honours us parents who don't have living children. Talking about it helps to recognize us as parents, not just that we're recognized by others, but that we can recognize ourselves and honour our grief around it.When I started speaking about it and I was very vocalnot just in poetry, but alsosociallyit surprised me how many people then shared their own stories of loss. In that way, we can help honour each other," Gaston said in an interview withCBC Books.

"I am thrilled, surprised, and most of all so grateful to be able to honour my son in this way."

• How Lise Gaston wrote the poem that won the 2021 CBC Poetry Prize

"Poetry has long addressed the materials with which life furnishes or afflicts everyone, love and loss above all. And at the farthest reaches of our existential concerns, there is death, writ large to us to be managed as grief. Good poets find or forge ways to redeem and make these sing. Perhaps technique really is the test of sincerity, whether political, emotionalor indeed beyond these realms. Maybe in spending some minutes of our lives with a poem here and there, our great reward might be the dissolving of falsities that come from the separate silos we too often make of head and heart.

"Here is a poem written with the sensitivity of a monarch landing on the palm-side of a wrist. Its beauty and pain are expressed with a profound emotional intelligence that pulls the reader inward and outward again. In its appreciation of its subject, James invites such wonder and asks what it might take to break the social taboo still attached to the loss of an infant. It is an aching joy to read," the jury said in a statement.

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The 2021CBC PoetryPrizejurors wereLouise Bernice Halfe, Canisia Lubrin and Steven Heighton.

Theyselected the shortlist from alonglist of 31writersthat was compiled bya team of writers and editors from across Canada.

The four finalists for the 2021CBC PoetryPrizewere Mia Andersonof Port Neuf, Que.for Onion, AdrianaOni of Edmonton for Untranslatable, Bola Opaleke of Winnipeg for The Morgue in My Tearsand Alison Watt of Nanaimo, B.C.forAddendum "Flora of a Small Island in the Salish Sea".

They will each receive $1,000 from theCanada Council for the Arts.

Marise Bellettewon the Prix de posie Radio-Canada 2021for Sommes-nous de la mme gorge qui ne consent plus la prire.

Last year's English-language winner was Montreal writer and photographerMatthew Hollettfor his poemTickling the Scar.

TheCBC Literary Prizeshave been recognizing Canadian writers since 1979. Past winners include Alison Pick,David Bergen,Michael OndaatjeandCarol Shields.

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If you're interested in otherCBC Literary Prizes, the 2022CBC Nonfiction Prizewill open in January and the 2022CBC Poetry Prizewill open in April.