Continuing on with our profiles of past winners of the Foster Poetry Prize, this week we have 2018 winner Joseph Kidney! Read on to learn more about Joseph, what his experience winning the contest taught him about garbage poems, and head to this link to submit your own work by November 1st!
“Winning this award from CV2 for the poem “Garbage Takeout” reassured me that just because the poem was about garbage didn’t mean that the poem was garbage. I still remember quite distinctly the three locations in which I discovered that the poem had been longlisted, then shortlisted, then chosen, and the three increasingly unusual surges of elation, not without the sense of having gotten away with something. Winning gave me both a renewed confidence in writing, as well as the ability to pay off some credit card debt. I’m still very grateful to Mallory Tater and CV2 for this honour.”
Joseph Kidney has published poems in Vallum, Oberon, The Fiddlehead, The New Quarterly, and PRISM international. He was shortlisted for the Bedford International Poetry Award, won the Short Grain Contest from Grain, and won The Young Buck Poetry Prize (now the Foster Poetry Prize) from CV2 for the best poem submitted by an author under 35. He was raised in New Westminster, BC, attended undergraduate and graduate school in Montreal, and is in the process of completing a PhD in early modern drama at Stanford University.
Find him on Instagram as @zacnephron or on Twitter at @josephkidney2.
Many thanks to Joseph for reminding us that poems about garbage might not BE garbage — they might be contest winners!
Submit your own garbage poem today! $1000 and publication in CV2 could be yours.