Contests

FROM CANADIAN MAGAZINES
contests, prizes, and awards for individual poems — prizes often include publication

• Briarpatch Writing in the Margins contest
• The Capilano Review Robin Blaser Poetry Award: $750 first prize, September deadline
• CV2
  • 2-day Poem Contest: $500 first prize, takes place in April
  • Young Buck Poetry Prize: $1,000 first prize, October deadline
• Exile Literary Quarterly‘s Gwendolyn MacEwen Poetry Competition: $3,000 in prizes, June deadline
• The Fiddlehead Annual Literary Competition: $2,000 first prize, December deadline
• Freefall Annual Prose & Poetry Contest: $500 first prize, December deadline
• Geist administers several awards throughout the year, with new themed contests popping up all the time! Some of the regular poetry contests include their Haiku contest, and their erasure poetry contest. Visit their website for more information.
• Grain‘s Short Grain Contest
• The Malahat Review
  • Open Season Awards: $4,500 in prizes, November deadline
  • Far Horizons Awards: $1,000 in prizes, May deadline, fiction and poetry in alternating years
  • Long Poem Prize: Two $1,000 prizes, February deadline, takes place in odd-numbered years
• Matrix LitPOP awards: publication and a VIP pass to POP Montreal, July deadline
• MusicWorks Sonic Geography Writing Contest: $500 first prize, August deadline
• The New Quarterly Nick Blatchford Occasional Verse Contest: $1,000 first prize, March deadline
• Prairie Fire Banff Centre Bliss Carman Poetry Award: $1,250 first prize, November deadline
• PRISM International Pacific Spirit Poetry Prize: $1,500 first prize, October deadline
• Pulp Literature Magpie Awards: $500 first prize, April deadline
• The Puritan Thomas Morton Memorial Prize: $1,000 first prize, September deadline
• Room Fiction & Poetry Contest: $1,000 first prize, July deadline
• Vallum Award for Poetry: $750 first prize, July deadline

OTHER CANADIAN CONTESTS, PRIZES, AND AWARDS
for individual poems

• The RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers; $5,000 first prize, fiction and poetry in alternating years, spring deadline
• CBC Poetry Prize; $6,000 first prize, May deadline
• GritLit Writing Competition
• Utmost Christian Poetry Contest
• The League of Canadian Poets’ National Broadsheet Contest

CANADIAN CONTESTS, PRIZES, AND AWARDS
for chapbooks and books of poetry

• Griffin Poetry Prize; published books, Canadian and International winning categories
• Leaf Press holds an annual chapbook manuscript competition which awards publishing contracts to one Canadian and one international poet. Everyone who enters gets to choose a book from Leaf’s trade catalogue.
• Ricepaper ACWW Emerging Writer Award; unpublished manuscripts
• Quebec Writers’ Federation book awards, including a first book award and a poetry award
• Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, presented by Matrix and Insomniac Press; unpublished manuscripts, January deadline
• Vallum Chapbook Award; unpublished manuscripts, March deadline

INTERNATIONAL CONTESTS, PRIZES, AND AWARDS
for individual poems

• Ledbury Poetry Competiton: £1000 first prize, July deadline
• Central Coast Writers Contest: $1,000 first prize, July deadline
• Winchester Poetry Prize: £1,000 first prize, July deadline
• Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition: £1000 first prize, August deadline
• Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest: $1,500 grand prize, September deadline