In Every City, the Trees; The Ex-Fighter Dreams a New History by Chelsea Dingman

Chelsea Dingman has made the 2018 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for In Every City, the Trees; The Ex-Fighter Dreams a New History.

• 30 writers make longlist for the 2018CBC Poetry Prize

About Chelsea

Chelsea Dingman's first book, Thaw, was chosen by Allison Joseph to win the National Poetry Series. She is also the author of the chapbookWhat Bodies Have I Moved. She has won prizes including the Southeast Review's Gearhart Poetry Prize, the Sycamore Review's Wabash Prize, Water-Stone Review's Jane Kenyon Poetry Prize, and The South Atlantic Modern Language Association's Creative Writing Award for Poetry. Her work is forthcoming in Redivider, New England Reviewand the Southern Review, among others.

Entry in five-ish words

Migration, marriage, identity, illness, witness.

The poem's source of inspiration

"I've been writing a series of poems I hesitate to call it a collection yet about my husband's experience as a professional hockey player and our experience as emigrants. What is lost and what is gained by moving around so often?How much of our identities are built in us from a young age, from our first home[lands], from our histories?How much do we gain as we move around the world and carry all of those places with us?These poems are also about the struggle and stigma surrounding brain injury and depression, particularly as hockey is such a revered sport in Canada and men are raised to pretend to be superhuman in a culture of silence."

First lines

Tampa

It is said that witness
trees once mapped this land

for European settlers. Consider
the live oaks & palm trees

that line the yard. What devastation
of time or memory

will they map?

About the 2018CBCPoetry Prize

The winner of the 2018CBCPoetryPrizewill receive$6,000 from theCanada Council for the Arts, will have their story 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.