Wakanda, Oklahoma by Bertrand Bickersteth

Bertrand Bickersteth has made the 2018CBC Poetry Prize longlist for Wakanda, Oklahoma.

• 30writers make longlist for the 2018CBC Poetry Prize

About Bertrand

BertrandBickerstethwas born in Sierra Leone, raised in Alberta, and has lived in the U.K. and the U.S. Bickersteth is an educator who also writes plays and poems. His poetry has appeared in several publications, includingthe Antigonish Review, Cosmonauts Avenueand the Fieldstone Review. He lives in Calgary, teaches at Olds Collegeand often (always, actually) writes about black history in Western Canada.

Entry in five-ish words

Black farmers seizing slavery's seeds.

The poem's source of inspiration

"An unexpected advertisement inspired these poems. I became interested in reading the original ads that enticed black families to settle in the Canadian Prairies near the start of the 20th century. I perused a number of newspapers published by and for Oklahoma's black readership, encountering their editorials, absorbing the trivialities of their wanted ads, and relishing over their community issues. Then I came across an ad from Walter Lewis that stopped me short: he was searching for his mother and sisters who had been separated from him during the civil war 25 years earlier. I suddenly realized that my focus had been wrong. These were not my personal symbols to dust off and shake in the faces of the average Albertan who I saw as dismissive of an important strand of the province's history. These were actual people who had lived the aftermath of a brutalizing institution. The contradictions of their resulting aspirations deserved telling. Some of them were desperate to stay. Some of them (my symbols) were eager to leave. And some of them were torn between leaving and simply leading their lives because they had already been torn. Ack!"

First lines

Wakanda Call
Tulsa Star, March 14, 1914

160 Acre Farms in
Western Canada
Free

WakandaMath

Beulah Mae reads the ad
many times thinks
it can't be so bad
to add a little clamor
to your glamour.

She had some math from school
yet this addition eludes
the soul's abacus,
refutes simple equating
from the inside.

About the 2018CBCPoetryPrize

The winner of the 2018CBCPoetry Prizewill receive$6,000 from theCanada Council for the Arts, will have their work published onCBC Booksandwill have the opportunity to attend a writing residency atthe Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Four finalists will each receive $1,000 from theCanada Council for the Artsand have their work published onCBC Books.