Chimwemwe Undi, Shani Mootoo, Bren Simmers among poets longlisted for League of Canadian Poets prizes
Other poets on the longlist include Rob Taylor, Shō Yamagushiku, Zehra Naqvi and more
Chimwemwe Undi, Shani Mootoo and Bren Simmers are among the Canadian poets longlisted for the League of Canadian Poets' poetry awards for books published in 2024.
The organization administers three poetry prizes to celebrate the past year's best published works — the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for debut books, Pat Lowther Memorial Award for books by Canadian women and Raymond Souster Award for books by League members. The winner of each prize receives $2,000.
Undi's Scientific Marvel is nominated for both the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the Raymond Souster Award.
Scientific Marvel is a poetry collection that looks into the history of and current life in Winnipeg. With humour and surprise, it delves into deeper themes of racism, queerness and colonialism while keeping personal lived experiences close to the page.
Scientific Marvel won the 2024 Governor General's Literary Award for poetry.
Chimwemwe Undi is a Winnipeg-based poet, editor and lawyer. She was the Winnipeg poet laureate for 2023 and 2024. She won the 2022 John Hirsch Emerging Writer Award from the Manitoba Book Awards and her work can be found in Brick, Border Crossings, Canadian Literature and BBC World. Undi was longlisted for the 2020 CBC Poetry Prize.
If you're interested in poetry, the 2025 CBC Poetry Prize is currently accepting submissions. You can submit an original, unpublished poem or collection of poems from April 1-June 1.
Shani Mootoo and Bren Simmers are both longlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award.
Mootoo is being recognized for the poetry collection Oh Witness Dey!
With no record of how they got there and where they're originally from, Shani Mootoo's great-great-grandparents were brought to Trinidad by the British. Oh Witness Dey! discusses the concept of "origin" through an exploration of history, displacements and legacy, starting with her own.
Mootoo is a writer and visual artist who currently lives in Ontario. Her debut novel was 1997's Cereus Blooms at Night. Her novel Polar Vortex was shortlisted for the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her other books include the novels Cane | Fire, Moving Forward Sideways like a Crab and Valmiki's Daughter. In 2022, she won the Writers' Trust Engel Findley Award for fiction writers in the middle of their career.
Bren Simmers is nominated for her poetry collection The Work.
The poems in The Work explore the themes of loss and grief and how one can make themselves whole again after being broken. From the sudden death of her father, her mother's dementia and her sister-in-law's terminal illness, Simmers' poems show us how healing can come from love.
The Work was among the finalists for the 2024 Governor General's Literary Award for poetry.
Bren Simmers is the author of four books, including the wilderness memoir Pivot Point and Hastings-Sunrise, which was a finalist for the Vancouver Book Award as well as a collection of poetry titled If, When. Simmers won the 2022 CBC Poetry Prize for her poetry collection Spell World Backwards, which is included in The Work. She was previously longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2013 and in 2012 for Science Lessons.
Shō Yamagushiku and Zehra Naqvi are both nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the Raymond Souster Award.
Yamagushiku is nominated for shima, a poetry collection that questions both the past and future of a community exiled, anchored in the relationship of a father and son. It shows the fragility of memory with a voice at once yearning and precise.
Yamagushiku is a writer and researcher living in Victoria. In 2022, Yamagushiku was selected as a mentee by Kaie Kellough through the Writers' Trust of Canada's mentorship program. shima is his debut poetry collection.
Naqvi is being recognized for The Knot of My Tongue, which uses a variety of poetic forms to capture a cast of characters as they attempt to express the inexpressible, from a new immigrant to Canada trying to speak a new language to the myth of Philomena searching for ways to communicate after her husband cuts off her tongue.
Naqvi is a Vancouver-based writer who was born in Karachi. She won the 2021 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. The Knot of My Tongue is her debut poetry collection.
Barbara Tran is the only poet to receive 3 nominations for her collection Precedented Parroting, which explores themes of loss, the natural world, Asian stereotypes and our feathered friends. It's also a book about survival through generations and how both loss and feathers can enable and necessitate flight.
Tran is a poet whose work has appeared in Women's Review of Books, Ploughshares and The New Yorker. Her honours include a MacDowell Colony Gerald Freund Fellowship, Pushcart Prize and Lannan Foundation Writing Residency. She was born in New York City and currently lives in Toronto. Precedented Parroting was a finalist for the 2024 Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry.
In 2018, Tran was on the longlist for the CBC Nonfiction Prize.
2025 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award longlist:
- The Seventh Town of Ghosts by Faith Arkorful
- I Hate Parties by Jes Battis
- Blood Belies by Ellen Chang-Richardson
- Aqueous by Nathanael Jones
- Wrap in a Big White Towel by Callista Markotich
- What Fills Your House Like Smoke by E. McGregor
- The Knot of My Tongue by Zehra Naqvi
- Last Hours by Jennifer May Newhook
- Dayo by Marc Perez
- Precedented Parroting by Barbara Tran
- Scientific Marvel by Chimwemwe Undi
- shima by shō yamagushiku
2025 Pat Lowther Memorial Award longlist:
- The Seventh Town of Ghosts by Faith Arkorful
- Heliotropia by Manahil Bandukwala
- I Will Get Up Of Of by Simina Banu
- impact statement by Jody Chan
- Farm: Lot 23 by Tonya Lailey
- Empires of the Everyday by Anna Lee-Popham
- Good Want by Domenica Martinello
- Oh Witness Dey! by Shani Mootoo
- The Knot of My Tongue by Zehra Naqvi
- The Work by Bren Simmers
- Invisible Lives by Cristalle Smith
- Precedented Parroting by Barbara Tran
2025 Raymond Souster Award longlist:
- Heliotropia by Manahil Bandukwala
- WAKEWord by Wakefield Brewster
- Ox Lost, Snow Deep by Alice Burdick
- In the Key of Decay by Em Dial
- Graphis scripta / writing lichen by Clare Goulet
- Aqueous by Nathanael Jones
- The Knot of My Tongue by Zehra Naqvi
- echolalia echolalia by Jane Shi
- Weather by Rob Taylor
- Precedented Parroting by Barbara Tran
- Scientific Marvel by Chimwemwe Undi
- shima by shō yamagushiku
The shortlisted titles for each award will be announced on May 7, 2025.
Last year's winners were Hannah Green, Sandra Ridley and Bradley Peters.
