Congratulations to the 2017 Winners of the Jessamy Stursberg Poetry Prize!

The Jessamy Stursberg Poetry Prize for Canadian Youth was established to foster a lifelong relationship between Canadian youth and the literary arts, specifically poetry. The prize is supported through a generous donation from the Stursberg family and other donors in honour of Jessamy Stursberg. The prize accepts submissions from young poets all across Canada, with three prizes awarded in both the Junior (grades 7 to 9) and Senior (grades 10 to 12) categories: 

Winner: $400
Second Place: $350
Third Place: $300 

Without further ado, we present your 2017 Jessamy Stursberg Poetry Prize winners:

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Senior winners

Jury: Aaron Tucker, Sue Chenette and Kevin Spenst

First place, senior: “Anarchy After the Barbershop B&E” by Melanie Thompson, grade 11

Sirens in the night speak
for the baptized who look

at the loitering Rottweiler
beguiled by
carnage
as he barks
in time to

the beating rain.

Streetlights cast the shadows of
two mannequin heads losing
their hair

on the ground
beside scissors, shampoo,
artificial white roses, and

in smashed mirrors
the twisted reflection of
an electrical outlet tries in vain
to smile

while the
forlorn moon
hides its face.

Judges’ comments: This spare poem depicts violent aftermath with startingly subtle and clear imagery, allowing the reader to view and evaluate the scattered remains of a barbershop’s bizarre corpse and arrange the surreal tableau from the objects of the text, rather than relying on the prior drama of the robbery. This focus on the effects, rather than the event, is further unsettled by the shifting of the lines across the page, moving the reader from the lefthand margin and instead asking that the scene be given halting but careful consideration. Kevin Spenst writes that the poem is “subtle in its point, which might just be that most important point of poetry: to observe the world. It records in clear images and unique phrasings a scene of destruction and leaves us to consider its import.” Sue Chenette, after noting the fine aural techniques utilized in the piece, praises “the clarity that this poem achieves – a kind of verbal light – where the familiar becomes strange enough that we stand at a slight distance from it, and, at this distance, see more sharply our sad human capacity for destruction.” That distance, the “sirens in the night,” the thieves that have already escaped, the “loitering Rottweiler,” are this poem’s affective core: that the inhabitants of this neighborhood are left to sift through the rain and put what was once a familiar space back together, work back towards a normalcy amongst the twisted reflects of the broken mirrors and the gazing forlorn moon. – Aaron Tucker

Second place, senior: “How to Look at the sun” by Farah Ghafoor, grade 11

Your mother still talks about how pale you were as a baby, how
beautiful in your smallness. She could wrap an entire
hand around your spine if she desired. And then you grew
the wrong way, your back stretching out your best
dress as you and the boys from class dove into another Californian
summer.

Your mother passed down a ritual of patting sour yogurt
and lemon juice on cheeks until they glowed from copper to gold.
But you could not stop conducting light even as it puckered
your skin and ran across your forehead like a halo. Even as you filled
a room’s shallows, your mother’s shadow.

When your house turned blood-
orange in a season, you started to play with the prettier children.
How they rubbed crushed cranberries on your lips and tucked
dried violets behind your ears. Rare clovers crumpled under your thick
knees in perfect obedience and bad luck. It was 2008, and you didn’t like power

you couldn’t hold in your hands: your mother staring at your body all
cedar beside the other girls’ willow, the wind that shook you
senseless with its teeth, the sun and its mighty tongue. Your mother turning
away as you nurtured a forest with a mouth you made tiny, cupping
rainwater and kind animals in your brown, callused hands. The fireflies
looked up to you, blinking embers that loved as much as they burned.

Judges’ Comments: The voice in “How to Look at the Sun” moves with confidence and fluidity, sustaining a fine balance between an almost-submerged narrative and images that both mask and convey it. Light that “puckered/ your skin and ran across your forehead like a halo,” “Rare clovers crumpled under your thick/ knees in perfect obedience and bad luck,” “cupping/ rainwater and kind animals in your brown, callused hands” – these fresh and surprising phrases have a dream-like potency, rich in emotional reverberations. Kevin Spenst points out that they achieve “a kind of North American magic-realism that is brought to life in astonishingly unique detail.” Aaron Tucker observes that their intensity “weaves a stunning picture of growing up.” They are complemented by phrases that provide narrative underpinning: “another Californian summer,” “Your mother passed down a ritual …” while the poem’s focus remains on the texture of what is remembered and felt. This is a poem that engages us in a resonant complexity of experience and leaves its remarkable images echoing in the reader’s mind. – Sue Chenette

Third place, senior: “The Moth” by Farah Ghafoor, grade 11

Do not remind me again of how, just outside this small
country, the waves slam against the beach like dozens
of bluebirds on glass. Aimless hunger before
the people who surround you as red-slabbed cliffs
of meat. You, a darkening bruise, occupy
this sandy porch until I can not wish you away any
longer. Who am I to quell the oil
lamp in front of the moth?

The moth and its eyes like unyielding black stones.
The moth and its unceasing quest for fire.

I relinquish civility and you are a lit, shrieking
matchstick. I give you no exits because you wanted
none. I open windows to expose you
and the sweet breath of death in your mouth.
In the burning, you are satisfied for a moment
and all the infinities you have escaped.

Of course, one day the sun will loosen its hands from
the day’s throat. One day, this house will be nothing
more than a dim bulb in your wooden fingers,
and we will both only be smoke on glass.

Judges’ comments: As a poem “The Moth” burns bright with visceral similes and metaphors, stunning rhetorical effects and electric language that hums. Confidence in a confluence of ideas and images runs through the poem from start to finish and the lushness of the entire effect draws one back to the poem for multiple readings. While sadness and something sinister rage through the world of the poem, there’s also a softness that invites interpretations. Sue Chenette writes: “What gives a poem its ring of authority? For me, in this poem, it’s the way the images are handled. They work to draw the moth as metaphor for humanity.” Aaron Tucker observes, “There are a lot of great phrases here (the shrieking matchstick, the sun loosening its hands from the day’s throat) that fit quite well in this really dramatic and philosophical-ish work.” The power of poetry is in taking the seemingly simple material of language and arranging it into unforgettable phrasings. By this definition, “The Moth” is an astonishing success. – Kevin Spenst

Honorable mentions:

“For a flower to bloom” by Agam Aulahk

“Glenview Estates, Tallaght, Ireland” by Orla McElroy

“Hatshepsut” by Molly Anne Robson

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Junior Winners

Jury: Jacob McArthur Mooney, Raoul Fernanes and Richard Kemick

First place, junior: “Gray” by Samantha Chen, grade 9

I only know two houses,
One dilapidated, dirtied, red bricked bungalow; flimsy shuttered.
The other hard and flat, scarce of furniture,
collector of timepieces. Cold to meet you.

I like to call them mine.

There will be space in the middle of my two houses.
Old pickle jars and handwritten letters might be scattered there;
things that many people no longer have use for.
And they sit abandoned and wind swept,
where space sleeps between my opposites,
where the bruises of our minds roam, where movement is non-existent,
where wind will settle on our forgotten objects with ancient uses.

They’re forgotten because they’re fading.
Time is evident here.

Time invents new sacraments, new metaphors.
New things to lie next to me when it’s time to fall asleep.
These lost objects will swim though,
erode and weather down, improve or disintegrate.
Laced together, they find themselves laid down collecting dust.
When they come back as new trends,

they won’t be the same people.
Not the way I like it.

I want a newspaper world.
Where everything is ink and paper, no smudges, no blotchy colour,
there should not be more than one answer.
I don’t want to interpret, I don’t want that procrastination.
I don’t want to lose my mind with choices and control and manipulation
’cause there is no such thing as fate.
Someone else made a mistake and now we are all accidents.
Someone will rewrite our opportunities to make them more insightful.

I don’t like miracles.
When the words that were written in life’s shells change shape,
for a moment the surface of this world is tangible, delicate, pliable.
And we brush our minds into the last stand of existence,
driving something extinct, creating a possibility and emptiness to be filled,
and we’re left with the choice we cannot explain.
This is the end. I don’t get my way.

So I will sit in either of my houses,
Thinking,
There is no such balance in this world.

Judges’ Comments: “Gray” inhabits a psychic space that is complex, restless, and wise. When the poem states “Time is evident here”, it’s an understatement-time is a main character on this windswept stage, touching and affecting everything. The speaker’s distrust of this world of flux and disintegration is rendered masterfully through long, aching lines and occasional startling directness. This meditative poem doesn’t claim to find balance, but is more sophisticated-even hopeful-in how it examines that imbalance – Raoul Fernandes

Second place, junior: “Winter” by Christina Chen, grade 7

I knew cold, bitter winter was coming
As I sat on the pond’s edge
Frost spread in every direction
When I breathed, mist would form
All my capabilities would soon freeze
And my life would skate away
on the frozen pond.

Judges’ comments: “Winter” is a poem that traffics in simplicity. It opens with a careful, but distinctive, meditation on the season before skating away to a wistful and wise coda. The poet’s two concerns, winter and destiny, are drawn together quite comfortably for a poem that doesn’t try too hard to reach for an epiphany but finds one anyway and treats it like a clean, cold fact. –Jacob McArthur Mooney

Third place, junior: “Swollen” by Christina Chen, grade 7

Thick air
filling my lungs,

Bloat.

My brain inflates when
I get an idea.

There are no bad ideas.

My heart pumps with oxygen
When I’m proud.
Not Often.

Inhale. Don’t exhale.
Keep the air within.

Remember.

“I was inspired to write “Swollen” because I wanted to write a poem about succeeding and wanting that feeling of pride to continue. In addition, I wanted the idea of inflating to show growth. “

Judges’ comments: “Swollen” packs a laudable amount of meaning into these sparse yet revealing lines. The poem gains momentum from its use of verbs and nouns and the tension between the two: the brain inflates like a lung, the heart pumps air not blood. The command of the penultimate stanza (“Inhale. Don’t exhale. / Keep the air within.”) leaves readers with the longing desire to take in more than we give away, to be a sponge to our surroundings. Overall, “Swollen” shows a poet who operates with restraint, specificity, and originality. –Richard Kemick

Honorable Mention:

“A Girl” by Stephanie Jane Bruzzi, grade 9