This holiday season we are featuring the 2017 winners of the Cedric Literary Awards, given to previously unpublished Canadian writers of prose and poetry aged 50 or more. Founded in 2014, the Cedric program is an annual juried competition that also celebrates First Nations writers, Francophone writers and those who represent a pan-Asian heritage. More than 500 writers from across British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and the Yukon have taken part in the competition.
Today we feature KB Nelson, winner in the poetry category of the Cedric Literary Awards. On Friday, we will feature the final winner, Susan Pieters in the creative non-fiction category. The previous published winners were Guudiniia La Boucan in the First Nations category and Anneliese Schultz in the fiction category.
- - -
KB Nelson is the winner in the poetry category of the Cedric Literary Awards.
Karen Black started writing poems around age 10 and says she plans to continue until death or later! One of her childhood influences was hearing her father read the poetry of Robert Service when her family lived in Whitehorse, Yukon. When not writing poetry she dabbles in short fiction, including slice of life and speculative fiction. She has won awards in both poetry and short fiction and has been collaborating on a combined poetry/visual art project that is still a year or two from publication.
As well as the Yukon, Karen has lived in northern Ontario, Alberta, New Brunswick and New Zealand. A mother of two grown sons, she lives with her husband in Greater Vancouver. She plays drums with an amateur jazz combo, and piano for her own enjoyment. Karen writes under the pseudonym KB Nelson.
- - -
Celebrating nature
These three poems were excerpted from a collection entitled Celebrating the Natural World and the Humans In It.
- - -
Short Takes on February, March, April, May
February Martini
Two ounces of promise of spring
A splash of rebirth lore
Shake over melting ice and strain into a frosty glass
(Chill glass for preceding three monthsfor best effect)
Serve with a fierce twist of welcome
early March snow
globs of white on branch and twig
mimic spring flowers
impatient blossoms
so randy you can’t make it
down a branch to bloom.
springtime sidewalk
greening clouds of pink above
confetti below
- - -
Family Supper, Late August
You can’t just buy blackberries.
It’s time to make the summer’s pie
& procurement involves fierce negotiations,
offerings of skin and blood.
That’s the way it’s done.
Sunday evening the scattered family gathers,
father & sons banter, share advice, a meal.
How yesterday it seems,
they couldn’t stomach to share a table or a roof.
I serve the dessert,
proudly displaying thorn marks
on my arms, evidence of my
afternoon’s engagement.
We become silent for a moment,
smiles and tongues purpling
with sweet dark juice.
Residual prickles pester
my wrist,
the conversation resumes.
All is more delicious for
the scars earned in the making.
- - -
Golden Harvest
Days shorten and mornings are chilly
but we’ve not had our fill of summer
and revel in mid-day heat.
On greengrocer’s shelves,
a gastronomic conceit and magic word-local!
Palindrome-like, it attracts the eye,
reminds us of our own bountiful sun,
rain and fertile black loam.
Saturday market-our chance to imbibe
the local tone, chat, see, be seen,
peruse the farmers’ harvest.
They present their work,
as would an architect or artist,
for our appraisal:
sensuous curves of late season cherries,
pewter lights in tardy blueberries,
green velvet parentheses of kale,
exclamation marks of leeks,
warty pumpkins like aliens,
tomatoes’ ruddy fulsome cheeks.
Apples, apples, apples!
Tiny crab-apples for jam, for chutney,
familiar Macs, exotic Cripps Pink,
choose a lush decadent Fuji
and feel your lips wet.
Press your teeth against that
taut aromatic skin ‘til it rips,
pops open, you crunch and suck,
try to catch the sweet juice as it drips
down the inside of your little finger.
When precocious dark checks in,
overwhelmed by a gilt
harvest moon and brisk evening, thoughts turn
to the next change of season.
Our golden intoxication in the variety and
glut of the harvest will give way to
winter’s damp dull sobriety,
so we mound our joyful summer’s
yield on ice or in cool cellars,
or capture it in gem-like jars of delights,
that too soon will add summer cheer to
prosaic fare on grey winter nights.
- - -
What judge Gordon Thomas had to say:
An excellent collection of work, innovative in style and carefree in presentation. The poems roll effortlessly off the page, drawing this reader into visual imagery and emotion. I would venture to believe this poet has been writing for some time and invests a significant effort into his/her compositions and renderings, including multiple edits and refinements. There are very clever interjections and observations (blackberries and their “fierce negotiations/offerings of skin and blood”) and ingenious uses of space and type (the “ski hill” device employed in “The Ecstasy of First Tracks”).
This collection would be a joy to edit. From the opening lines of the first poem (“February Martini”) I immediately sensed a playful and gifted writer whose work would be appreciated by readers who appreciate a wry sense of humour coupled with touching observations of the human condition.
