Pandemic-themed poem wins 2020 CBC Poetry Prize
Matthew Hollett’s Tickling the Scar evokes the strangeness of the COVID-19 era in Montreal
Matthew Hollett. Photo via CBC
ST. JOHNS-BORN Montreal-based poet Matthew Hollett has won the 2020 CBC Poetry Prize for Tickling the Scar.
The poem was selected from 2,930 entries.
Hollett will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and a two-week writing residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Both organizations are partners of the prize with CBC Books, where Tickling the Scar has been published.
“Tickling the Scar’s lines turn from intimate witness to distant reportage and culminate in a chilling statement about the present moment,” the jury (poets Kaie Kellough, Dionne Brand and Stephen Collis) said in a statement. “Walking the Lachine Canal, the poem’s central I dissolves into an anonymous masked figure, the poem returning to the image of a lung, seen in the form of a lake and of a splayed mussel shell. As it breathes, it explores greed and recklessness, courage and industriousness, shifting scales effortlessly from the damage being done today, to the damage already done to the natural world that surrounds us. This is a poem without a false step, gliding smoothly between the topical and timeless.”
Hollett said he was heartened and humbled that his poem was selected as the winner. “It was hard to write about the pandemic, and I find my poem difficult to read now, as the number of coronavirus cases continues to climb,” the writer and visual artist said in a statement. “Those early days back in the spring felt so strange, and I wanted to document that strangeness. This feels like a new kind of poem for me, so it’s very encouraging.”
The four runners-up for the CBC Poetry Prize are Vancouver’s Selina Boan for Conversations with Niton, Have you ever fallen in love with a day; Hiromi Goto of Victoria for alley/bird/ally; Emily Riddle of Edmonton for Learning to Count; and Andrea Scott of Victoria for Adipose Glose. Each will receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts.
CBC Books also announced Anna Quinn as the winner of the French grand prize for Mauve est un verbe pour ma gorge. More information is available at ICI.Radio-canada.ca/icionlit under “Prix du poésie.”
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