Confederation Poets Prize
Read press releases and prize-winning poems.
The Inspiration
Archibald Lampman, William Wilfred Campbell, and Duncan Campbell Scott, all members of the Confederation Poets—so called because they were all born within a decade of Confederation —lived and wrote in Ottawa, where, in the formative years of a new country, they helped lay the foundation for the tradition of poetry that Canada now enjoys. A century later, Arc hounours them, as well as acknowledges the wealth of new writing currently being built on their legacy by poets in the national capital and in Canada as a whole.
Prize Details
The Confederation Poets Prize includes a cash award of $250 given for the best poem published
in Arc in the previous calendar year. The editors invite a distinguished poet to select the poem he or she
considers to be the most noteworthy among the many fine poems Arc has collected in its two annual issues.
All poems published in Arc in a given year are automatically entered. There's no need to apply.
Winners announced in the first issue of the following year
Arc is pleased to announce
Peter Norman
is the 2008 winner of the Seventeenth Anuual
Confederation Poets’ Prize
for his poem in Arc 59
“Up Near Wawa”
selected by
Joan Crate
Previous Winners
| Year | Winner | Poem | Judge |
| 2007: | Michael Trussler | “Asleep” | Anne Simpson |
| 2006: | Elizabeth Brewster | “Moody Weather” | Molly Peacock |
| 2005: | Terence Young | “Brave” | Di Brandt |
| 2004: | Mark Sinnett | “What Separates Us From the Birds” | Gary Geddes |
| 2003: | Margo Button | “Interviews at the Elders' Palace” | Heather Spears (Denmark) |
| 2002: | Neile Graham | “Wearing Nothing But the Midnight Sun” | Douglas Lockhead |
| 2001: | Roger Nash | “Breaking a Plate” | Elizabeth Brewster |
| 2000: | Elizabeth Brewster | “On Reincarnation” | Al Purdy |
| 1999: | Wayne Tompkins | “Hidden Register” | Douglas Lockhead |
| 1998: | Gregory Scofield | “He Is” | Claire Harris |
| 1997: | Roger Nash | “Circumstantial Evidence of the Visitation of Angels” | D. G. Jones |
| 1996: | Mary di Michele | Selections from “Crown of Roses” |
P. K. Page |
| 1995: | Barry Dempster | “Unconditional Love” | Don McKay |
| 1994: | Erin Mouré | “Halls” | Phyllis Webb |
| 1993: | Elisabeth Harvor | “Do You Live Alone?” | Anne Szumigalski |
| 1992: | Elisabeth Harvor | “Bloom, Rain” | Don Coles |
| 1991: | Harold Rhenisch | “Talking with the Wind” | Robin Skelton |
