Bag of Gas by Murray Reiss

Murray Reiss has made the 2018 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for Bag of Gas.

• 30 writers make longlist for the 2018CBC Poetry Prize

About Murray

Born in Sarnia, Ont., Murray Reiss has lived on Salt Spring Island since 1979with his wife, Karen, a ceramic sculptor. His first book, The Survival Rate of Butterflies in the Wild, won the 2014 Gerald Lampert Award and was runner-up for the Fred Cogswell Award. His second collection, Cemetery Compost, came out in 2016. A chapbook, Distance from the Locus, was published in 2005. Reiss also brings his words to life on the stage as a Climate Action Performance Poet and founding member of Salt Spring's Only Planet Cabaret.

Entry in five-ish words

Waves. Ripples. Intergenerational cross-cultural trauma.

The poem's source of inspiration

"The poem was inspired by coming across the quotation from Angela Rich 'I won't stop sniffing gas because when I do I can see my brother' that now serves as the poem's epigraph. My mind leapt from the plight of the young Innu children of Davis Inlet to my father not as great a leap as you might first think. My father was the only one of his family not to have perished in a concentration camp in Poland. He was, as another poem describes him, "a second-hand survivor." I can only imagine he never spoke of it how he must have felt after receiving such devastating news. I can only imagine and isn't that what poems are for how, like the gas-sniffing youth of Davis Inlet, he must have yearned to join his departed brothers, no matter the cost."

First lines

"I won't stop sniffing gas because when I do I can see my brother."

Angela Rich, Sheshatsiu, Davis Inlet

Such an obvious plan that if it occurred to Angela Rich,
sixteen at the time, it must have struck my father,
in his thirties in those months before I was born,
when the lantslaite knocked at his door
and tried to tell him,
shuffled their feet and pulled at their long grey beards

About the 2018CBCPoetry Prize

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 attheBanff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Four finalists will each receive $1,000 from theCanada Council for the Artsand have their workpublished onCBC Books.