25th Trillium Award

James Scoles wins the 2013 CBC Canada Writes Poetry Prize

 
Share |

Congratulations to James Scoles, winner of the 2013 CBC Canada Writes Poetry Prize for his poem "The Trailer." This year's jury, made up of Canadian literary giants Sue Goyette, David McGimpsey and Anne Michaels, selected "The Trailer" from a strong shortlist that included works by poets across the country. This year's competition received 1,400 submissions.

The jury admired the scope of "The Trailer" and the skill with which it was carried out: "With wit and memorable precision, "The Trailer" takes a setting which is not familiar to poetry, adopts its argot, houses it within a firm structural base and elegantly chronicles the pain inherent in the concept of "success". Each quatrain expresses the fullness of an individual life, and indicates not just the conscious suffering of the speaker, but the ways in which class-orientated discrimination denies the subjectivity of the individual."

James Scoles teaches creative writing at the University of Winnipeg, living for three months of the year in a trailer south of Vernon, B.C. His writing — fiction, poetry and literary non-fiction — has been nominated for the Western and National Magazine Awards, The Journey Prize and the Pushcart Prize. As winner, James will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, and his prize-winning poem will be published in the October edition of enRoute Magazine. He will also receive a two-week residency at The Banff Centre’s Leighton Artists’ Colony.

The French-language winner is Louise Gagnon for "Le fruit, le don." Her poem can be read here.

James Scoles will be celebrated at a special event at the International Festival of Authors entitled “The Poet Summit” on Saturday, October 26. Visit our Events page for details.

At a reception following the Poet Summit, CBC’s Shelagh Rogers and Kevin Sweet will present the awards to the Grand Prize Winners, English-language and French-language.

The four runners-up for the prize — Cassidy McFadzean (Regina, SK), Pamela Porter (North Saannich, BC), Robin Richardson (Toronto, ON) and Alison Smith (New Germany, NS) – will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts. Their poems can be read online here.

Post new comment

  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

More information about formatting options

By submitting this form, you accept the Mollom privacy policy.

Advanced Search