When it's 9:48pm... by Nicole Boyce

Nicole Boyce has made the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for When it's 9:48pm and the kids are asleep and you realize you've spent the entire night on your phone.

The winner of the 2024CBC Poetry Prizewill receive $6,000 from theCanada Council for the Arts, a two-week writing residency atBanff Centre for Arts and Creativityand have their work published onCBC Books. The four remaining 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. 14and the winner will be announced on Nov. 21.

If you're interested in theCBC Literary Prizes, the 2025CBC Nonfiction Prizeopens in January and the 2025CBC Poetry Prizewill open in April.

About Nicole Boyce

Nicole Boyce's work has appeared in CV2, The Dalhousie Review, EVENT, The Fiddlehead, Grain, Joyland, The Malahat Review, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Prairie Fire, Riddle Fence and more. She received her MFA from UBC's Creative Writing Program.

She is currently working on a short story collection about motherhood (with support from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts) and a rom-com novel.

Boyce made the longlist for the CBC Nonfiction Prize in 2021 for One Route, Over and Over.

Entry in five-ish words

"Time, parenthood, the internet abyss."

The poem's source of inspiration

"This poem is about the hours of 8 p.m.-10 p.m. on a weekday, a time that for many people, and particularly for the parents of young kidsis the only semi-reliable sliver of 'free time' in day-to-day life. I wrote the first draft of this after an evening spent phone scrolling, while I was thinking about all the things people think we 'should' be doing with our free time (cardio? organizing our photos? cleaning the microwave?), all the things we are actually doing (watching Instagram reels, eating chips), and the value and meaning of each."

First lines

But listen, there was a crucial thread on Twitter
a debate about whether Full House is a fair portrayal
of grief. There's an Instagram account, too, about using
cling wrap to blend your makeup, and another one about feeding
a midwestern family of ten: this lady is making the biggest casseroles.

Check out the rest of the longlist

The longlist was selected from more than 2,700 submissions. A team of 12 writers and editors from across Canada compiled the list.

The jury selects the shortlist and the eventual winner from the readers' longlisted selections. This year's jury is composed of Shani Mootoo, Garry Gottfriedson and Emily Austin.

The complete longlistis:

• Borderland by Howard Anglin(Calgary)
• on the last day of ramzan, the moon makes the sun in its image byManahil Bandukwala(Ottawa)
• Lament by Jessica Bebenek(Montreal)
• Citrus Dreams by Elena Bentley (Clavet, Sask.)
• When it's 9:48pm and the kids are asleep and you realize you've spent the entire night on your phone by Nicole Boyce(Calgary)
• ABC Gum by Devlin(Halifax)
• scar/city I by Daniela Elza(Vancouver)
• I Thought I Might by Tamsyn Farr(Wakefield, Que.)
• Score Before Cutting by Claire Gordon (Ucluelet, B.C.)
• There is no neutral way to say I was fourteen by Cicely Grace (Vancouver)
• After Icebergs by Matthew Hollett(St. John's)
• a house in O's name by Eimear Laffan(Nelson, B.C.)
• Gas Station Coffee by Paula Lemke(Langley, B.C.)
• magdalene sonnets by Louie Leyson(Vancouver)
• (Eat the Bitterness) by Emily Yiling Ma (Burnaby, B.C.)
• Kananaskis by Kathleen McCracken(Belfast, Northern Ireland)
• A Tenuous Life Act, I Lay Dreaming by Sasha Pickering (Halifax)
• Regeneration and other poems by KatherinePoyner(Nanaimo, B.C.)
• Girls of the Now by Dora Prieto(Vancouver)
• No Apples and Oranges by Marion Quednau(Sechelt, B.C.)
• i'll expect big things from the moon later tonight by c. a. r. rafuse(Ottawa)
• Song for the Earth and the Water by HaroldRhenisch(Vernon, B.C.)
• Palimpsest County by Rachel Robb(Toronto)
• Doom Scroll by JennySampirisi(Toronto)
• Northern Childhood by EleonoreSchnmaier(Ketch Harbour, N.S.)
• Some Notes on Intoxication and Simile: Like Butterscotch by Catherine St. Denis (Victoria)
• The Killer and the Harpist by Catherine St. Denis (Victoria)
• The Rupture byAye Lara Yildirim(Toronto)