POETRY
Winner:
“on learning the language” by Michelle Brown
Notes from our Judge: Yvonne Blomer
I love the sense of hesitancy that this poem holds and illustrates through the tension of its lines and spaces. Also, its use of punctuation, so that brief images and statements hold their space with a finality, even though the process of learning Cree is ongoing, the person learning it takes it one phrase or word at a time. The poem has the feeling of a thinking poem, a processing, this is “only my third winter,” and “I am learning my age in Cree” are evidence of what is being learned, while holding what has been lost or taken. The poem does not speak to what has been lost, but through learning Cree the lost language sits at the poem’s centre.
Runner Up:
“The Thick” by Veronika Gorlova
Notes from our Judge: Yvonne Blomer
This is a wonderful poem, with lines that sit like flame or smoke on the page. The epigraph places the poem in Maui, but the poem is not set in Maui it is set in the Okanagan. I think between the epigraph and the poem a reader gets a sense of how pervasive fire season has become so that the specifics of two places, set alongside each other, capture the overwhelming times we are in. The details of the fire, the daily life captured here as well does a lot of work to highlight how much fire has become a part of life, how thick in it we all are. There are other violences in the poem, a hit and run, there is a sensory exploration of taste, smell, sensation and a kind of sixth sense of this thick, this creaturely presence.
Honourable Mention:
“Ebbie’s Poem” by Linda K Thompson
FLASH FICTION
Winner:
“Water-Poppies” by Donna Shanley
Notes from our Judge: Barbara Black
This is a profound and haunting tale of rejection and resistance, love and transformation, meticulously crafted. From the opening statement “I did not wish to be what I became…” the reader descends into an intimate, mythic world of cruelty and resilience. The setting—the sea. The tale of curses and otherness is disturbing but at the same time beautifully lyrical and spell-binding with writing that, in places, calms in remembrance then swells to condemnation. Similes and metaphors echo the aquatic world: “wordless songs that spawned visions,” and “…curses snagged my skin like fishhooks.” The speaker’s voice, righteous and wounded, carries the narrative, balancing bitterness with her one object of devotion, her brother, bewailing the cruel curse that transformed her from human to an aquatic being. A truly evocative story that is unforgettable.
Runner Up:
“The Gifts of Low Tide” by Erin MacNair
Notes from our Judge: Barbara Black
“We were reborn.” One snappy first sentence and we’re in. That’s why it’s called flash. And this writer skilfully demonstrates the concision, tone and intrigue of the genre. There’s a flicker to the words, a dose of wonderment and a duality that makes the two divers in this story resemble the unusual starfish they’ve encountered. The writer uses language that makes the story come alive: “sea-salt licked feet,” “yawning purple mussel shells,” and “we inhaled the pine and twilight.” The couple’s startling discovery of “technicolour” starfish is not merely a physical thing of interest, but, along with a startling message which later appears in the sand, will later cause them to reassess where they are in life, how it feels to be alive in the present. I enjoyed the breezy pace of this story, the lightness, the tone of curiosity. And it’s always brave to close with a question.
CREATIVE NONFICTION
Winner:
“Sparrow Nest” by Rachel Foster
Notes from our Judge: Harrison Mooney
Sparrow Nest is full of gorgeous prose and heady subtext. A sense of great unease hovers over our narrator, who is processing an abnormality within her inner ear and, potentially, permanent hearing loss. The stakes grow exponentially as we pivot from the doctor’s office to her role as an environmental consultant — a job that calls for healthy ears, so as to identify the little nests threatened by diggers and buffers in Northern BC. The stakes are raised at once, as she struggles to tune out the noise, both literal and metaphorical, in order to locate the sparrow chicks buried in glades of tall grass in the path of the mulcher. Birdsong is becoming noise for her, however, and her description of this symptom is rhythmic, poetic and doleful — the saddest-music in the world.
“I struggled to untangle them over the tinnitus, which throbbed in a pendulous skittering of static and dissolved birdsongs into muffled chirrs.”
The word choice here is wonderful. Chirrs are for crickets, lowly bugs, and it’s clear that the magic and music of birds is at risk. External are everywhere as well. The noise of construction makes everything worse. The cacophony is winning.
But our heroine is undeterred. To save the baby birds, she has to get down on all fours, become an animal herself, and rely on her senses of sight and of touch. When she finds the tiny nest, we get the button, as she tells her partner: “I guess he can turn the bloody thing off now.” If only for a moment, she has overcome the noise. It’s masterfully done. Creative nonfiction as its finest.
Runner Up:
“Love Like Salt” by Lynda Philippsen
Notes from our Judge: Harrison Mooney
Love Like Salt gives us a beautiful pairing of images: ashes, as those of our narrator’s father, and salt from the old tale that brings us full circle. There’s a sense of cremation as some greater loss than interment: a permanent end. But this piece reminds us that there is beauty and value in both. The image, as well, of the Dad-light our heroine sees after witnessing the whole cremation process is a memorable and beautiful one. It’s a light of loss and melancholy memory. “The bone-coloured sky is incandescent with brilliant, other-worldly light,” our author writes, and it’s a perfect representation of the way that grief blankets the sky after losses like this one. The late incorporation of an ancient tale — in which a princess is cast from the kingdom for likening love for her father to salt — is pitch-perfect. It’s a tidy and lovely conclusion that shows a holistic approach to this essay’s construction. Love Like Salt is skilful and thoughtful and downright delightful to read.
SHORT FICTION
Winner:
“Confluence” by Martin Borden
Notes from our Judge: Traci Skuce
I loved the way the rivers move through this story. Quiet and with force–dragging, sometimes, the bloated bodies of livestock into its currents. This juxtaposed with the rock, the unassuming narrator’s most recent (though ancient) companion. I appreciated the undertone of grief in this story as the narrator’s thoughts eddy back in time, reflecting on the children she’s taught, children now grown, living adult lives. But the grief isn’t for them, it’s for time itself, the way time carries us down its river. So that suddenly we’re no longer young. And we have to ask ourselves–as in the Talking Heads song–how did I get here?
Runner Up:
“The Cross-Eyed Vagabonds” by Shelley A. Leedahl
Notes from our Judge: Traci Skuce
This story is pure voice. The narrator is charming in a gritty way. How could you not be drawn in by the first line? “It started with puppets, as it often does.” And then we’re in the confines of a touring van with our outcast narrator and his two salacious buddies on the way to their puppet gig up in Edmonton. Then, of course, there’s a hitchhiker. And no, it’s not what you think. Which is another wonderful thing about this story. The writer doesn’t reach for the predictable. Plus it’s well-structured, and hits all the right notes in its finish. As any good short story does.
