CNF Contest: Enter for $1,000, Books, Mentorship

The August 1 deadline to submit is fast approaching! One winner will take home the $1,000 grand prize.

Don't forget about our bonus prizes:

Enter by July 15 to be considered for a writing mentorship with Liz Harmer, who won the CNF Prize in 2013.

And all entrants will be automatically entered to win a gift bag of five nonfiction books from Canadian publishers!

This year's contest judge is Brian Brett.

Submit your contest entry today.

 

Malahat poetry board member Samantha Ainsworth talks with upcoming Summer issue contributor Lenea Grace about the human condition and musical influences in her poems "Farmhouse-Side A" and "Auld Lang Syne, etc."

The Summer issue is being finalized and will be mailed to subscribers later this month... stay tuned!

SA: Your poetry is so chock-full of sensory details that one cannot help but be transported into the poems' realm. How does a poem come to you? Do you create a poem by building it around an image or memory or does it unfold before/within you, as with your recent Malahat poems?

LG: Often a phrase or image will loom in my mind for weeks, months, even years before I figure out how to build off it and make a poem. I'll start by typing (always typing, never longhand—I need to see how it looks on the page) phrases and lines—that might take up a few pages before the actual poem starts to reveal itself. I have my muses—you'll see I revisit the same tropes, invoke repetition to beat a horse well dead. "Auld Lang Syne, etc." is a companion poem to a piece I wrote about nine years ago—it shares the shape and scope of its brother.

Read the full interview with Lenea Grace on our website

 

Malahat editorial assistant Rose Morris talks with Spring issue contributor Curtis LeBlanc about play, family, and place in his poems "Milk Separator" and "Cribbage."

RM: "Milk Separator" deals a lot with family and place, mediated through the material object of the milk separator. Can you talk a little about the significance of material objects in your work?

CL: When writing autobiographical poetry, I like to think of details as variables. Each detail and object is something that can be added or removed or altered to fit the poem. The question I always ask myself is: which of these objects or details needs to remain true to reality in order for me to capture the idea or emotion I want to in the poem? In the case of "Milk Separator," everything that you see in that garage is actually in there somewhere back in Edmonton—or at least was at some point in time. If I had to make up the milk separator to write the poem, the poem probably wouldn't exist. Often these objects from my life are the inspiration, the starting point, for poems. Sometimes they find their way in there later.

Read the full interview with Curtis LeBlanc on our website