Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “In the Beginning” by Ellie Sawatzky, winner of the 2026 Pamela Paige Porter Poetry Prize.

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In the Beginning

By Ellie Sawatzky

I put my hand in grass a deer had curled to spiral.

I was the first person I loved. Original mercy.

What did it remind me of, rosette of sorrel

buttoned to my Chip & Pepper T-shirt? Pussy?

I birthed myself. It was my greenest era.

North of town, a red pickup named Anxiety—

she/her for some reason. Eve, caesura.

If not for her, I never would have found the city.

Wouldn’t have earned a degree in wondering

or written books about it. I’d still be there.

Flower porn and just the usual thoughts of dying.

But hell, I need you all to know how much I care.

I’m a fool for thinking this will bring me home.

I waited, but the deer did not return. I wrote a poem.

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Copyright © Ellie Sawatzky

Winner of the 2026 Pamela Paige Porter Poetry Prize.

“In the Beginning” belongs to the forthcoming collection, Hottest Smartest Self (ECW Press, spring 2028)

Ellie Sawatzky (@elliesawatzky) grew up in the territory of the Anishinaabe Nation in Treaty 3 (Kenora, Ontario), and currently lives, works, and plays on the unceded, ancestral, and traditional territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples (Vancouver). A UBC MFA alum, she is the author of two poetry collections: None of This Belongs to Me (Nightwood Editions, 2021) and Hottest Smartest Self (ECW Press, forthcoming spring 2028). Recent poems have appeared in The Walrus, The Fiddlehead, EVENT, and elsewhere. She works as an editor and is founder and facilitator of the Strathcona Poetry Studio. Write with her on Tuesdays at Tuesday Night Write, a drop-in style, generative poetry class on Zoom.

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