The Young Buck poetry prize is awarded to the author of the single best submitted poem, along with $1000 and publication in CV2. Four honourable mentions are also being awarded, each with a cash prize.
The winner of the 2019 Young Buck Poetry Prize of $1000 is:
Jake Byrne for “Parallel Volumes”
Honourable Mentions and $150 go to:
Alycia Pirmohamed for “Burial Plot”
Harpreet Kang for “Dad Gave Me Poetry”
Allie Duff for “Necessary Sins”
Natasha Ramoutar for “Atlas of a Lost World”
The prize-winning poems will be published in our Summer 2020 Issue.
Here is what our judge, Shazia Hafiz Ramji, had to say about the winning entry and about her experience judging the contest:
“Selecting the winners of CV2’s 2019 Young Buck Poetry Prize was an extremely difficult task. The poems that made the shortlist were thoroughly beautiful – each one was simultaneously grounded in the body and in the sprawl of the world: full of sticky rhythms and torqued with heart. It was not easy to choose a winner. The winning poem, “Parallel Volumes” by Jake Byrne, changed the way I breathed. It spoke its secrets, hurts, and beauty the way a friend might. It is a disarming poem that lives in the tension between fragments of poetry and the unifying urge of narrative. It is a poem like a hurricane, gathering everything around it, from Dionne Brand to therapy, to write the “I” in its multiplicity. “Parallel Volumes” is a defiant, ambitious poem that brims with generosity.”
Thank you so much to Shazia, and to everyone who submitted their work! Until next time!