'I started to scream': Winnipegger wins prestigious literary award for debut poetry collection

The works of two Winnipeggers have been recognized with prestigious Governor General’s Literary Awards.

Chimwemwe Undi’s “Scientific Marvel: Poems” was honoured in the poetry category and Nigaan Sinclair’s “Wînipêk: Visions of Canada from an Indigenous Centre” won in the non-fiction category.

“(When they told me) I was in my office on a Teams call that I had to climb off of,” Undi told CTV Morning Live Winnipeg.

“A pretty typical Monday morning for most people and I started to scream, and they told me it was confidential, so I had to kind of muffle my reaction.”

Undi and Sinclair’s works were selected from 1,529 nominated books. Fourteen Governor General’s Literary Awards were given in all in 2024.

The prestigious awards come with a $25,000 prize for each author.

“Scientific Marvel” marks Undi’s debut full-length collection of poetry. Her work finds firm roots in Undi’s hometown.

“Artists often say your first work is one that you have been writing for your whole life,” she said.

“The questions that I think about in “Scientific Marvel” are very fundamentally about Winnipeg and what it means to live in the city, what the future of the city might look like, what it means to live on Indigenous land in 2024.”

Undi was born in Winnipeg, moved to Namibia when she was two years old, and moved back to our city when she was 13. This “complicated pathway,” as Undi describes it, led her to feel like a bit of an outsider.

It created a natural tendency to observe, she said, something that continues to drive her writing life.

Another influence in her poetry – her day job. When she’s not writing, she is practicing law. Its language infiltrates and informs much of her writing, she said.

“I think any poet would tell you any sort of interesting or unique language finds its way into your writing. It just happened to work in a field that is very language-driven."

- With files from CTV’s Rachel Lagacé