On the Imminent Destruction of Portage Place Mall by Chimwemwe Undi

Chimwemwe Undi has made the2020CBC Poetry Prize longlistforOn the Imminent Destruction of Portage Place Mall.

The winner of the 2020CBCPoetry Prizewill receive $6,000 from theCanada Council for the Arts, have their work published onCBC Booksand have the opportunity to attend a two-week writing residency attheBanff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Four finalists will each receive $1,000 from theCanada Council for the Artsand have their work published onCBC Books.

The shortlist will be announced on Nov. 5and the winner will be announced on Nov. 12.

About ChimwemweUndi

Chimwemwe Undiis a former poet-in-classrooms with Poetry in Voice, an alumnus of the Banff Centre's Emerging Writers Intensive and an editor at CV2 Magazine. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Brick, Border Crossings Magazine, Room Magazine, at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word, the Edinburgh International Book Festival, in the Winnipeg Free Press and BBC World, among others. She lives and writes on Treaty One territory in Winnipeg.

Entry in five-ish words

"Stolen city on stolen land."

The poem's source of inspiration

"The experience of living and work in downtown Winnipeg. I owe a great debt to Owen Toews' book Stolen City: Racial Capitalism and the Making of Winnipeg for shaping much of my recent writing and thinking about the place I call home."

First lines

not a bomb but leveled still unkeeling
listless or lacking inventory shortly, nothing

shortly, unmade harkening back to blondes
on VHS stockings named for favoured subset of flesh
glitter rides the escalator's churn

jingle dirges in the backlight specter
backlight blue geometrical impossible
this edifice: "the biggest thing to hit the city

since the flood" flood displaced in meaning
by a bigger flood mall displaced
in meaning by the flood of us

About the 2020 CBC Poetry Prize

The winner of the 2020CBCPoetry Prizewill receive $6,000 from theCanada Council for the Arts, have their work published onCBC Booksand attend a two-week writing residency at theBanff Centre for the Arts and Creativity. Four finalists will each receive $1,000 from theCanada Council for the Artsand have their work published onCBC Books.

The 2021CBC Nonfiction Prizewill open in January. The 2021CBC Poetry Prizewill open in April.