BIG LEAGUE CHEW | It’s been more than two months since I found out that I am not just a finalist, but a double finalist (meaning I have two separate poems in the running) for the Montreal Poetry Prize. 

Or rather the 2026 Montreal International Poetry Prize to be precise, which I suppose I ought to be. It’s a pretty big deal. 

This long lead time is normal. Big awards tend to let longlisters know well in advance of any public announcement. Organizers need time to confirm eligibility, gather press and website materials, all that jazz. And the final judge (in this case, the incredible Natalie  Diaz) needs time to consider and choose the ultimate winner, so anonymity has to be preserved throughout that strictly-blind process.

Longlisters are almost always told, then bound to keep-mum for ages, formally or informally. 

The MIPP went the informal route, as it happens, simply asking us to be patient. We were not made to sign anything. The acronym “NDA” did not appear, was not uttered. 

I almost wish it had been. Lord, grant me the confidence of a mediocre white man, sure, but while you’re at it, could you also grant me a binding legal agreement? Just something explicit in contract-form that I can refer back to, again and again, checking and double checking as many times as my anxious heart desires.

Wouldn’t that be nice?

Early-notice is an operational truth, but not one gleaned directly from any sort of past personal experience, you understand. It’s more something I picked up via the writerly ether. I’ve been lurking in the shadows of contests like this for years, despite my already-mentioned 20-year self-imposed hiatus from submitting, trying, and being entirely alive.

It is an ether swarming with secrets, and having lurked so long, I’ve absorbed many.

Regardless, two months is a long time to wait. My double-finalist status was only announced to the public on October 14th (my Dad’s 80th, coincidentally) and so when the IG post went up, I found myself feeling almost blasé about it, which was perhaps by-design. Having six-to-eight weeks to get used to the idea may have kept some of us from embarrassing ourselves and performing that greatest-of-Canlit-crimes: emotive excitement.

When I first heard my poems “Pseudoarchaeology” and “Myth, Mother, Starling” had made it through along with fewer than 60 other poems, from a pool of more than 4400 global entries, and chosen for advancement by two different jury members, working blind, I was the opposite of blasé, which is not to say that I reacted normally. 

Rarely do I react normally or properly to anything. This is part of my nature and my neurotype. I laugh when in severe pain, when I’m able to feel pain at all. The last time I visited an ER, a nurse addressed me in a slow, low, serious voice, looking pointedly into my eyes from less than two feet away, “You were right to come in. Do you understand? You. are. very, very. sick.” He punctuated his words and created emphasis by manhandling my shoulders, giving my head a shake, literally. 

It was fine. What I needed. I’d be about to apologize again for using up resources, wasting their time. 

Normal reactions seem to elude me at every turn. I get thirsty when I’m tired, and a headache when I’m hungry, but I never think to sleep, nor to eat to resolve either. Instead I’ll drink ice water and stay up all night, or pop three NSAIDs instead of having a snack.

When someone tells me a traumatic tale, in an effort to relate to them and to make them feel less-alone, I feel a pressing need to tell a related tale of my own.

I may not be “normal” but neither am I stupid.

I have learned not to do this, lest I create a tangible reason for anyone to hate me. You know, on top of all the intangible ones. It is an instinct that reads as weird (pejorative) egoism rather than as a kindly desire to create community. And impact > intention. 

When the Montreal prize email came through, I was sitting in my car, engine running, AC on, enlarging my carbon footprint, surrounded by the potholed, gravelly surface of the FREX parking lot. 

I was half-zoned out, half-inert, in a transition freeze, caught in that sticky liminal state between one thing and the next, the fly-trap that gets me every time (because I am that brainless, all instinct, that unable to learn). Blundering, always.

Sorry to say, I was also catching Pokemon in between refreshing my email, constantly, reflexively, as I have done for more than thirty years.

I was an early-adopter of email, as it happens, bouncing between the usernames bk922 and misscherrypi. I did not have a cell phone. No one I knew had a cellphone. Dial-up internet still made that horrific screeching noise and the computer I used to access it was in a cramped family room, where it was easy for anyone and everyone to watch what I was doing over my shoulder.

My favourite computer games were Kings Quest 5 and 6, Arkanoid, and  Faces…tris III (a Tetris-variant). These games were kept secret, as was my email address. No one else I knew at my high school had email yet. Almost no one else had a PC at home.

It’s strange, the things we remember.

When the email came, I had to read it again, then again. I was sure I’d misunderstood. On my third pass, which I made slowly carefully, trying to parse each word, watching lest it swim off the virtual page, I laughed aloud then clapped a hand to my mouth in horror and blinked back a few panicked tears. 

The double-finalist thing felt, as ostensibly-good things always do, like a potential trick of some kind, a rug-about-to-be-pulled-out-from-under, a prank. 

I had to ask a friend for perspective. “This is real, right?” I asked. “And it’s okay that I’m telling you? That’s not breaking a rule, is it?” And “You’re sure they won’t take it away? I mean, I know they could take it away. Can. But they won’t, right? That would be … pretty unlikely. Right?”

I live in constant fear of inadvertent rule-breaking, of making mistakes. This fear rises and leaks out of my eyeballs in the form of tears, it leaps from my mouth dressed as a hysterical laugh.

It has always been thus.

Look, I suspect the ultimate winner of the prize already knows. That is just a guess, but it feels likely to me. Then again, as I just explained, feeling correctly has never been a strength of mine. Whatever happens next, somewhere deep, I know this is a huge honour, and that I should be proud. 

I am proud. Criminally, so. Excited, even.

Alas, because I am also unwell (mentally), I am also caught up on thoughts like “I bet people hate these poems” and “I bet they’re saying mean things about me behind my back.” And the thing is … that’s true. They are. Some of them, anyway. 

There are always going to be someones like this. I have knowsn many such someones personally. (The usual suspects. I’ve mentioned them before.) 

But it’s fine. 

God grant me…

I begin, before stuttering to a halt, blinking, and remembering reality. This is an objectively good thing, a “remarkable achievement” (to quote the letter itself. There is nothing I want, nothing to pray for or be granted.

I already have strength.