Nothing is more urgent to me than genocide

On My Mind | Victoria Butler Book Prize

Oct 17, 2024

I’m very grateful to receive the 2024 Victoria Butler Book Prize, and I’m honoured to be in the company of these wonderful finalists: Ali Blythe, Tim Lilburn, Arleen Paré, and shō yamagushiku.

Thanks to the judges Susan Braley, Susan Sanford Blades, and Ian Higgins; the Victoria Buttler Book Prize; the City of Victoria, and Kathryn Marlow who hosted this event!

Thanks to Book*hug Press, my editor Malcolm Sutton, my husband David Poolman, and all my family and friends.

I cannot celebrate a literary award when our government is supporting a genocide through arms sales, inaction, and narrative warfare against the Palestinian people by US-funded Israel.

I will be donating the $5000 prize money to three organizations. To be clear $5000 is a lot of money to me. I would have liked to pay down debt or put the money towards SMLTA and raise contributor honorariums or do any number of things with it.

But right now nothing is more urgent to me than genocide. Western governments, media, and institutions have collectively decided to profit off the genocide of Palestinian, making us all complicit.

Young men burned to death in hospital tents, children with bullets in their skulls, parents picking up the body parts of their children, and the bombing of schools, hospitals, and refugee camps. This is what has been going on for a over a year while our governments and media try to tell us what we see isn’t what we see.

Below are some thoughts I shared at the Victoria Butler Book Prize event as well as the list of organizations where I will be donating this money.

Despite my deep gratitude for this honour, I don’t desire literary accolades. Rather I accept the award and donate this money in the hope that it encourages others to speak out, donate, or use whatever resources are available to them to stop genocide.

Victoria Butler Book Prize Acceptance Speech

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Kathryn Mockler
October 16, 2024, Union Hall, Victoria BC

I’m humbled to be in the company of these finalists and their beautiful books.

No matter how solitary the act of writing can feel, a writer is always addressing a collective, shared world - describing, analyzing, critiquing, redefining, and expanding it. For me, writing is inherently political. Writers cannot ignore the world that shapes their words nor the world that receives them.

In Anecdotes, I use personal experiences to grapple with violence, oppression, and the climate crisis, and I am accepting this award at a time in which a genocide is being perpetrated by Israel against Palestinians with the support of the US, Canada, and many European states—the same colonial forces responsible for the genocide of Indigenous Peoples across Turtle Island.

While Canada makes me complicit in these crimes through its arms sales and moral failure, I am deeply grateful to the judges and the Victoria Butler Book Prize for enabling me to donate the entirety of this award money to the following:

• RAVEN Trust an Indigenous justice organization that raises legal funds for Indigenous Peoples in Canada to defend rights and the integrity of lands and cultures;
• Doctors Without Borders for their work in Palestine, Sudan, the DRC, and over 75 countries;
• and Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.

I encourage anyone appalled by these atrocities to seek out groups like ArmsEmbargoNow and World Beyond War.