<![CDATA[PHOENIX POETRY PRIZE - blog]]>Tue, 12 May 2026 02:16:06 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[Write to Us: Poets, What do you need?]]>Sun, 05 Apr 2026 22:57:51 GMThttps://www.phoenixpoetryprize.com/blog/write-to-us-poets-what-do-you-needFeedback forms seem to be a hot topic in the Canadian poetry community currently, and yes, around April Fools Day we put out our own feedback form as a little joke. But jokes, Isabella truly believes from her own lived experiences, hold in them pockets of truths. Sometimes they stem from uncomfortable topics or conversations that need to be had. So let's dissect the "humour" surrounding whatever parodies can be weaved around the infamous feedback form. 
To ask for and receive feedback, there implies a relationship between someone offering a response, and someone who listens. The person asking for feedback is saying, "here are a list of things I want to know, I'd like you to tell me what you think." The person responding is taking their time to answer something they feel is worthwhile answering, knowing feedback will be received; ideally listened to or absorbed. There is a space created, an invitation. There is time spent in offering, in trust. Feedback forms, the way that many operates nowadays, absconds from this relationality. Those asking for feedback are behind a fourth wall. Those offering a response have no way of knowing if there is anyone listening; how their words are valued or interpreted. 
What if however, we can use the convenience and technology of feedback forms to our advantage, and still instill that relationship back? What if we situate the feedback form back into the community? What if relationships, conversations, energy, listening, sharing, serves the basis of community-based feedback forms in ways that are felt? What if we were to say, this isn't just a feedback form; your voice truly matters. We want to hear about your day?

So, as a social experiment, we are launching a bi-monthly feedback form. Here, we are posing a question: poets, what do you need? More specifically, what do you need to be a poet in these times? To breathe easier? To crank out new poems? To be a happy human being? Along these lanes, what is something that a poetry prize with limited but open-ended funding possibilities could offer you to support you as a poet and human being?

Maybe it's something simple. Laundry detergent. A yoyo to keep those neurodivergent, fidgety hands busy. Maybe it's something more substantial: childcare; mortgage payments; a sizeable grant so you can just focus on your art and prosper. Maybe what you need right now isn't material. A breakthrough with that tough poem you are working on. A reader who will understand you and your words and the knowing that your poems have reached someone. A kind gesture. A smile. Just a bit of hope during a hard day or week. Whatever it is, tell us. We are listening. 

We want to listen for the sake of listening. And because, as we are running a prize, we are wondering about what it is that poets truly need. We can offer a certain amount of $$$ and be like, here, use it for something you need. We can offer gift cards for prize winners or a care package for the Super Honourable Mentions winner. But this makes us think about how each person receiving the prizes is different. We don't just want to shove something at you and be like, here, you won. Congrats! We want to offer something that you need, or like. And to do that, we need to ask: what is it that you want? What do you need?

On a smaller scale, this translates a gift box or how Isabella picks a gift card she knows the recipient will use. But as everyone on the board works together in the years ahead, we will think about how to raise funds or apply for grants in the future that most effectively helps us offer what poets most want. This requires more than a one-off feedback form, but a dialogue formed out of respect, relation, and trust over time. As we read your responses, we will keep in mind what folks need the most and work within our capacity to offer through the prize what is beneficial for individuals and the community. We will send out a feedback form every other month, and we invite everyone, to please do share with us what the poets need.
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Yours,
The Phoenix Poetry Board
PictureCaption: Poets, Write to Us. What Do You Need?
]]><![CDATA[PHOENIX POETRY PRIZE ANNOUNCEMENT:]]>Sun, 05 Apr 2026 16:20:17 GMThttps://www.phoenixpoetryprize.com/blog/phoenix-poetry-prize-announcement-new-prizesNew Prizes (against our better judgement); poet laureate shenanigans; 2025 poets rejoice!
Let me summarize what could be an otherwise really complicated announcement. A few new things are happening:

1. The Phoenix Poetry Prize is introducing two NEW, additional prizes to be awarded in 2027.
2. The Phoenix Poetry Prize is honoured to collaborate with THE POET LAUREATE PODCAST
3. The aforementioned two things will create opportunities for 2025 Canadian poets / poets publishing in Canada to be awarded recognition that they deserved for their hard work and words this year. 
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Okay now onto the complicated part. What does this all mean??? 

The Phoenix Poetry Prize is introducing two NEW prizes to be awarded in 2027.

The Phloreate Award

Judged by poet laureate Drew Lavigne: 
This prize is awarded to the best poetry book by a current or former Poet Laureate, because apparently representing poetry in public life is not exhausting enough. Judged by one of our past podcast Laureates, who for reasons known only to poetry will agree to take on yet another poetry-related responsibility.
PRIZE: an interview on the Poet Laureate Podcast, a modest sum of money depending on the current state of poetry economics, and this hat: 
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Alt text: Denim Ball Cap by brand Out of Print that says Born to Read Forced to Work.

The Nix Award

Sponsored by Isabella, judged by rob mclennan
This prize is awarded to an outstanding book of poetry written by a Canadian poet or poet publishing in Canada from 2025. Eligible poets must self-nominate; full list of eligibility criteria and nomination instructions can be found on the Nix Award page. 
Through bribery and begging on Isabella's part, rob has kindly agreed to judge. Hasn't he already read all the poetry books from 2025 anyway? 
PRIZE: brand new industry standard, wireless Sony WH-1000xm4 headphones with active noise cancelling valued at $400 AND $100 worth of support from a combo of the poet's choosing:
- contest fee waiver / lit mag subscription
- cannabis / bookstore / grocery / pet store / Uber gift cards
- 1-year kobo e-book subscription
- libro.fm audiobook credits
- kids / YA books by Indigenous / LGBTQ2+ / BIPOC authors
for the poet's child
- Ravensong candles, bath bombs,  soaps, products
- plain hard cash
ABOUT The Poet Laureate Podcast 
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NIX AWARD JUDGE: rob mclennan
Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. The author of some fifty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles include On Beauty: stories (University of Alberta Press, 2024), the poetry collections the book of sentences (University of Calgary Press, 2025) and edgeless (Caitlin Press, 2026), and the anthology groundworks: the best of the third decade of above/ground press 2013-2023 (Invisible Publishing, 2023). The current Artistic Director of VERSeFest: Ottawa’s International Poetry Festival, he spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta.
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PHLOREATE AWARD JUDGE: Drew Lavigne
​Drew Lavigne is the anglophone Poet Laureate of Moncton, New Brunswick. A member of the editorial board at The Fiddlehead and co-host of the Attic Owl reading series. Recent work has appeared in Vallum, Visual Arts News, Tourniquet Magazine, and with Éditions Rhizome. He  translated the collection Poems Twofold with Georgette LeBlanc and is the author of Evening Dress with Anstruther Press.
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]]><![CDATA[An Invitation to poets and the community]]>Fri, 03 Apr 2026 17:28:53 GMThttps://www.phoenixpoetryprize.com/blog/an-invitation-to-poets-and-the-community

SHARE YOUR INVALUABLE FEEDBACK BY THE NEXT MYSTERIOUS "TOWN HALL MEETING"
As founder of the Phoenix Poetry Prize, I am hosting a virtual gala around the time of the prize announcements where the whole community of poets, publishers, writers, winners, friends, whoever wants to come are invited. There will be chaos, readings by poets, lots of wholesomeness. And what is better than a party? TWO parties!

In wanting to hear perspectives from y'all, the Phoenix Poetry Prize would like to know if you would like a second party. Particularly an AFTER PARTY across the street from wherever a mysterious "town hall meeting" might be held sometime next year. Please leave your thoughts and suggestions. We will review all entries.

    Regarding the Phoenix Poetry Prize after party

]]><![CDATA[PSA ANNOUNCEMENT]]>Wed, 01 Apr 2026 15:23:34 GMThttps://www.phoenixpoetryprize.com/blog/psa-announcementPSA: Announcing the World's Smallest INTERNATIONAL prize for a Single book of Poetry
The Phoenix Poetry Prize - an independent poetry prize with no other affiliations - is one of the world’s poorest poetry awards. Celebrating the arrival of its 2-day anniversary having risen from the ashes and survived, it is announcing its largest, but still miniscule award to date.

The Phoenix Poetry Prize will be COMBINING all of its existing prizes into one exciting major prize awarded to a poet somewhere on the face of the globe. One winner will take home the top $250 prize, the gift cards from the Mother-in-Law and Foster Mom's choice awards, and ALL the fan-mail letters from the Super Honorable Mentions category regardless of who the intended recipients of those letters are. This makes it the world’s most pathetic international prize for a poetry book written in English or French. The other shortlisted poets will each receive a Phoenix Poetry Prize sticker for participation.

Due to the now international nature of this dazzling award, we will say that while we are operating on unceded and unsurrendered lands that Canada violently stole and continues to steal from Indigenous peoples, we cannot guarantee that Canadian poets will be awarded this prize. That said, if a Canadian poet were to move out of the country and change their nationality, and become say, Swedish, that would improve their odds of getting recognized by this award significantly.

Here is what founder Isabella has to say about her decision to go international, without consultation from any of the Phoenix's board members:
"Poetry is a lot of potatoes, and every culture and country has a different way of enjoying potatoes. If we only support Canadian potatoes, we will eventually be sick of poutine."

Happy April Fools, and thanks for supporting Phoenix Poetry Prize's humble beginnings.
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]]><![CDATA[Winners and All that Jazz *jazz hands!*]]>Sat, 28 Mar 2026 06:10:55 GMThttps://www.phoenixpoetryprize.com/blog/winners-and-all-that-jazz-jazz-handsPicture
Okay, y'all. Be prepared. These blogs are gonna be filled with my stream of consciousness and I'm determined to just say things and not worry about things like editing and making it perfect. I do that way too much in my writing life and part of what I'm trying to show with this prize is the actual expenditure of time, labour, financial costs on all ends. So cutting the bureaucracy and the "gloss" of making things perfect, I'm going to dedicate my time to what matters, which is the community and the poets themselves. Meanwhile you can sit back and get a sense of the relatively unfiltered stuff that comes out of Isabella's head as I type.

Picking a winner, I've thought a lot about how to do this for the top prize winner and also the winner of the Graffin--an outstanding book of poetry published in French. By now I've sat on quite a few juries for poetry book prizes and literary organizations, so okay on one end this is Isabella starting this random prize because 1) I'm bored though I don't have time; 2) I can and I love this thing called free-will; 3) I am curious of the directions a prize like this can go. What does it mean to break existing frameworks and set new precedents? Hit obstacles and figure it out along the way? To experiment? That said--I do know a bit of what I'm doing okay, from the experience of being on past juries. Having reflected on these experiences, I'm going to share some of the obstacles I see myself facing with this prize, and well, propose some ways to do this and you can tell me what you think.​

1. Even when judges are paid, the amount of $$ allotted to judges often does not meet minimum wage for the amount of hours that we actually put into reading, say, all the books of poetry published this year within provinces A, B, and C. Ya, there's some ways around that. Ie I've been told I don't have to finish the whole book if it doesn't resonate. But even with books that do, I cannot realistically spend as much time as I want to with them to meet prize deadlines. Then there is of course the fact that everyone, including judges, read at different paces. When it comes to poetry, I'm not a fast reader. Alas - wait a sec can I change the font on this cuz I don't like this font.... nope oh well. Wait what was I saying? Alas, this year at least I'm running on a really low budget. I'm not charging publishers submission fees to ensure that ALL poets who have published a book gets recognized by a "Canadian Poetry Prize" like the Girffin is. I don't have a fund for judges. That said, I refuse to let anyone's labour go unacknowledged or reciprocated.

2. Judging is super subjective and arbitrary. When such high amounts of $$$ are often at stake, I think that judges often feel they need to reflect the positions of the prizes to be objective. I think there's things put in place to ensure levels of objectivity: often prizes are judged by more than one person. There's discussions. There's different rating systems. Oftentimes, it is nice when I meet my fellow jurors for the first time and we share our top contenders, and there is more or less a level of agreement in terms of who we all think the top one or two contenders are. It makes me sigh in relief if my top contenders are picked by others too, because that means thank god Isabella you are not a total idiot. I see a lot of variation when judges are asked to pick their top five though, and that's where the subjectivity comes in: the books I want to longlist if I had my choice don't always reflect another juror's. 

So basically, I'm working with a limited budget of $0 and an awareness of the very non-objective and arbitrary processes of judging that I'm not gonna sugar coat. This allows me to thus propose a judging method that's super unorthodox, but one that effectively lessens the expected work placed on judges and ups the fun and chaos. That also acknowledges transparently the fact that prizes are subjective all along. This is the process:

We start with five judges I will reach out to. The judges will be compensated with a small gift donated by sponsors I'm currently harassing for collabs. I'm aiming for the jury pool to reflect a range of diversity in terms of backgrounds, provinces of residence, years of experience with poetry, age, etc.  I'm going to ask each of them to come up with one outstanding book of poetry they've read that year that meets the prize's eligibility criteria. A book that they would like to see recognized. While they do that, I will send them a recommendation each, of a different book of poetry on my favourites list. They will be asked to reflect on their chosen book alongside the recommended book they are reading, and between the two, choose the one that still resonates the most. These five titles, chosen by the five judges, will make the finalists. I will take my time with the five longlisted titles, and like the way I've judged in the past, choose a winner. 

Every year won't be like this. We are experimenting. But I'm proposing this for this year. And I'm offering $250 in prize money, not a down payment, so like doing it like this shouldn't get me cancelled right?

Isabella

ps. send me notes in the comments. ​
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