The Capilano Review’s Robin Blaser Poetry Contest is back for its 10th year! The winning entry of this year’s contest, judged by Jordan Abel, will receive an award of $1000, plus publication in an upcoming issue of TCR.
Contest Statement:
In Tommy Pico’s Nature Poem he writes, “I can’t write a nature poem bc English is some Stockholm shit, makes me complicit in my tribe’s erasure—why shld I give a fuck abt ‘poetry’? It’s a container.” The more I think about it, the more I agree with Pico. Poetry is at its best when it provides a space for radical work to exist. I’m not so much interested in the poem as I am interested in the expansive possibilities of what poetry can contain. I’m not so much interested in the poetic as I am interested in providing space for work that does not fit easily anywhere else. I am interested in the work that occupies the interstitial spaces between genres, between forms—writing that is explosive, resistant, and uneasily categorized.
—Jordan Abel, contest judge
Submission Period:
December 15, 2020 – January 30, 2021
Length:
Maximum 6 pages per entry
Contest Fee:
$25 for Canadian entries
$35 for US/International entries
Contest fee includes a one-year print subscription to The Capilano Review.
*Free entry for Indigenous writers — please email your submission to us directly at contact@thecapilanoreview.com.
*If the contest fee presents a barrier, please get in touch with us directly at contact@thecapilanoreview.com.
Ready to submit?
Upload your submission via our Submittable page here.
About our Contest Judge:
JORDAN ABEL is a Nisga’a writer from Vancouver. He is the author of The Place of Scraps (winner of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize), Un/inhabited, and Injun (winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize). Abel’s latest project NISHGA (forthcoming from McClelland & Stewart in 2021) is a deeply personal and autobiographical book that attempts to address the complications of contemporary Indigenous existence and the often invisible intergenerational impact of residential schools. Abel recently completed a PhD at Simon Fraser University and is currently working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta where he teaches Indigenous Literatures and Creative Writing.
Read Abel’s “things that go unnoticed here” here.
