A Stratford-born author and nature advocate is on the longlist for this year’s CBC Poetry Prize.
Alice Irene Whittaker is one of 26 writers from across Canada under consideration for the annual award, a group judges recently narrowed from 2,200 English-language submissions.
“It’s a tremendous honor,” Whittaker, the executive director of Ecology Ottawa, said Friday from her forest home in Chelsea, Que. “I receive rejection constantly for my writing … so when those moments come where it’s recognized, they mean so much. It’s just a true joy.”
Whittaker’s submission is called Spruce Bones, work that explores the deep connection she feels to the natural ecosystem in which she lives.
Asked by CBC Books to describe the poem in five words, she wrote: “My body, made of birds.”
“The deep sorrow, and love, that I feel for the boundless beauty of our Earth and her birds and animals inspired the poems of Spruce Bones,” Whittaker told the public broadcaster. “I have always felt that there is no boundary between myself and the world around me, and this comes with it great empathy and profound sadness.”
Whittaker was born in London, Ont., but grew up in Stratford after her family moved from the Forest City to the Festival City when she was a toddler. Surrounded by musicians, Whittaker said “creativity and art and expression” were all very much a part of her childhood, but she also found herself drawn to social justice issues as a student at Stratford Central secondary school.
“That was a big part of my coming of age,” Whittaker said. “Finding that space and that social justice world was really important to me. I was always wrestling with those two, wrestling with the artist side of myself and the social justice side of myself.”
Whittaker left Stratford to pursue dance in Toronto, a passion she enjoyed for several years, but has since shifted focus to her role as a communicator of environmental issues. Besides her work with Ecology Ottawa, Whittaker is also the creator and host of Reseed, a podcast about repairing our relationship to nature, and has authored several nature-focused essays and op-eds.
Whittaker said her poetry is “very much rooted in nature.”
“It goes deep into heartbreak about the eroding natural world, as well as trying to balance that heartbreak with the beauty that still exists,” she said. “Motherhood is a huge part of who I am and what matters to me and so I … make a lot of connections between my motherhood and the motherhood of other non-human species that I share my home here in the woods with.”
This isn’t the first time Whittaker has been up for a CBC literary prize. She’s previously been shortlisted once for the public broadcaster’s fiction prize and longlisted twice for its non-fiction prize.
The jury selecting this year’s poetry prize includes Armand Garnet Ruffo, Megan Gail Coles and Hoa Nguyen. The shortlist will be announced on Nov. 17 and the winner will be announced on Nov. 24.
Four finalists will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and have their work published on CBC Books. The winner will receive $6,000 and also attend a two-week writing residency at the Banff Center for Arts and Creativity.
A snippet from Spruce Bones, by Alice Irene Whittaker
Yellow-bellied flycatchers
care tender for young
in the mosses
blueberry, viburnum and mountain laurel
that intertwine under the safe shadow
of the cinnamon fern
brown creepers
and red-breasted nuthatches
know their home
as intimately as I do
finding my way from room to room
in 3 am darkness
to find my children