Wesbrook resident and poet Jennifer Chen has recently had her work recognized nationally after being longlisted for the 2025 CBC Poetry Prize.
Chen’s poem “Thirty-Seven Degrees 三十七度” was selected out of more than 3,200 submissions and among 23 works that made it to the longlist, which was compiled by a group of 12 writers and editors from across the country.
Chen says her poem was inspired after watching her mother pour tea. “I think poetry does something that other forms can’t quite do. It slows us down enough to notice what we’re actually doing with our hands, our bodies. In daily life, we pour tea without thinking. We fold clothes, we chop vegetables, we tie shoelaces. These gestures become invisible through repetition,” she says.
“But poetry asks: what if that invisibility is exactly where meaning lives? What if the way your mother tilts the teapot isn’t just functional, but is actually carrying generations of knowledge about care, about precision, about what it means to offer something to another person?”
Chen holds a Master of Fine Art from King’s College and is also a member of The Campus Resident’s Newspaper Editorial Committee.
As a member of the committee, Chen proposed and helped develop the newspaper’s Arts & Culture section, which has quickly become a favourite amongst readers since being launched in September. “I proposed the Arts and Culture section because I wanted us to see ourselves as more than just residents of a university neighbourhood.”
“We’re not just people who live near campus or who happen to share a postal code, we’re a community with painters, writers, cartoonists, sculpturists, musicians, people making things and thinking deeply about the world,” she says.
Through the newspaper and its commitment to the arts, she hopes the section will help build a sense of community amongst residents, while normalizing “creativity as part of everyday life”.
“I also think in a city as expensive as Vancouver, where artists are constantly being pushed out, having a local newspaper say ‘arts and culture matter here, creative people belong here’ is actually a small act of resistance,” she says.
“We’re saying: this community values more than just property values.”
Chen’s work can be found on Instagram at @jlchenwrites.
EMMANUEL SAMOGLOU IS THE MANAGING EDITOR OF THE CAMPUS RESIDENT.