Winner of the 2020 Nelson Ball Prize

Careful attention reveals that, even in moments that seem insignificant, our minds are constantly navigating disjunctions among registers of experience. Our intellect silently reminds our eyes that the car that appears to be moving between leaves is actually behind them and much larger. The sound of the vacuum cleaner in the next room is noise to be ignored. The phrase that arises in mind belongs to a conversation earlier in the day. Clear thinking demands that these navigations remain unconscious. But what if they're meaningful, or productive, in themselves? What if they're necessary to help us find a more meaningful place in the world? Branches explores these questions.

Mark Truscott's first book, Said Like Reeds or Things (Coach House, 2004), was shortlisted for a ReLit award and received an Alcuin citation for Darren Wershler-Henry's design. Poems appear in Pissing Ice: An Anthology of 'New`'Canadian Poets (BookThug, 2004) and in Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry (Mercury, 2005). Mark was born in Bloomington, Indiana, but has spent most of his life in Canada. He lives in Toronto, where he co-edits the small magazine BafterC and curates the Test Reading Series.

Mark Truscott's profile page

• Winner, Nelson Ball Prize for Observational Poetry

“These minimalist yet deeply meditative poems focus on the commonplace: how bare branches frame the sky, the movement of clouds, how light reflects off wood. They amount to an interrogation of perception itself, and in particular, the connection between thinking and seeing.” —Toronto Star

“The opening lines of Branches—one line per page—are about a line (or is it a branch?). We inch along, searching for definition in the oscillating throw of metaphor: “a branch like a line like a branch”. The desire to know, that exilic quality of the mind, is an old drama, and in Branches, Truscott enacts the wanderings of the mind with a single intent, and finds in the poetic line a direction home, a way of going further in the direction of what is to be thought, the direction that goes in both directions simultaneously. This book gives moving testimony of the need for poetry. For this reason, and so many others that you must discover by reading the book, we have chosen Branches by Mark Truscott as the winner of the Nelson Ball Prize for this inaugural year.” —Nelson Ball Jury Prize Citation