Submissions are officially open for CV2's Young Buck Poetry Prize, and we are so excited to announce that Shazia Hafiz Ramji is the judge for this year's contest! Below you can learn more about the contest, about Shazia, and about what she's looking for in a winning poem.
The Young Buck Poetry Prize is a contest for writers 35 and under, and is awarded annually to the author of the single best submitted poem, along with $1000 and publication in CV2. Three honourable mentions are also awarded, each with a cash prize. With a deadline of November 1st, you still have plenty of time left to submit.
Shazia Hafiz Ramji is the author of Port of Being (Invisible Publishing), a finalist for the 2019 BC Book Prizes (Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize) and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. It was also named by CBC as a best Canadian poetry book of 2018 and received the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. Shazia's writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, Best Canadian Poetry 2019, and Quill & Quire. She is at work on a novel and a second book of poems.
On what she's looking for in a winning poem, this is what Shazia has to say: “Poems that resonate with me always carry a rhythm that haunts and echoes; this is a heart-bound, ghost-filled, risk-taking route, one that I'm always seeking.”
