Where You From? by Andrew Burton

Andrew Burton has made the 2018CBC Poetry Prize longlist for Where You From?

• 30writers make longlist for the 2018CBC Poetry Prize

About Andrew

Andrew Burton grew up in Winnipeg and is a social worker, poet, theatre artist, activist and the artistic director of the Street Spirits Theatre Company in Prince George, B.C. He has been writing poetry, plays, short stories and nonfiction for many years. His work has been honoured with the Otto Rene Castillo Memorial award for Innovation in Theatre, Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal and the Canada Peace Medal. Andrew has toured as a spoken word artist, theatre director and performer across North America andholds a M.Ed. in fine arts from Simon Fraser University.

Entry in five-ish words

Winnipeg, dark experience, street-life, lost souls.

The poem's source of inspiration

"For years I worked 'street outreach'in a number of cities. This poem reflects the street culture of downtown Winnipeg, the archetypes of lonely and lost souls as I knew them. The view of the self and the view of the world held by people of the street, the beliefs and values develop from experience, colour and define street life leading to ways and means of being that perpetuate and redefine that experience until the gritty, painful and extreme seems natural and safe."

First lines

I am a castoff child of the city
I am from the back alleys
haunted by threadbare rats scrapping
over the remains of soup bus sandwiches
vomited up by junkies too long in the needle to care
I am from the twilight time
before the sun creeps up all stealth and anger

Interviews

About the 2018CBCPoetry Prize

The winner of the 2018CBCPoetry Prizewill receive$6,000 from theCanada Council for the Arts, will have their workpublished 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.