5 past winners share writing tips for entering the CBC Poetry Prize
The CBC Poetry Prize is open between April 1 and June 1
The 2025 CBC Poetry Prize is open for submissions and the winner will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, a two-week writing residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and their work will be published on CBC Books.
You can submit an original, unpublished poem or collection of poems, up to 600 words in length. The deadline to submit is Sunday, June 1 at 4:59 p.m. ET.
We know that submitting to a literary prize can be a daunting task. That's why we asked five of our most recent past winners of the CBC Poetry Prize for their best writing tips. Here's what they told CBC Books.
Matthew Hollett says: "I used to carry a paper notebook everywhere, recording little details or observations throughout my day. These days I do most of my writing on a screen. But if I find myself stuck, switching to handwriting often gets my brain going again. The tactility and fluidity of writing on paper activates different patterns of thinking.
"I keep a journal on my phone and often note little details about my day, especially if I'm out for a walk. How icicles hang diagonally after a winter storm, or the smell when I walk by the flour mill. Later, when I'm sitting in front of a blank screen trying to remember or imagine something, these sensory impressions are invaluable.
"I'd encourage anyone to enter the CBC Literary Prizes — it's a wonderful way to get your work out there, connect with a community of writers across the country, and support CBC! The annual deadlines are a great motivation to finish or rework something to give it that extra oomph."
Matthew Hollett is a writer and photographer in St. John's. His work explores landscape and memory through photography, writing and walking. Optic Nerve, a collection of poems about photography and visual perception, was shortlisted for the J.M. Abraham Poetry Award and longlisted for the BMO Winterset Award. Hollett was named one of CBC Books' writers to watch in 2023.
In 2020, Hollett won the CBC Poetry Prize for Tickling the Scar. Before that, he was on the CBC Poetry Prize longlist in 2016 for Merchant Vessel and Bomb Crater Behind Vimy Station; he also made the longlist for the 2017 CBC Nonfiction Prize for Painting the Curlew. Most recently, he made the longlist for the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize.
Lise Gaston says: "Don't spend too much time searching for the perfect word, phrase, or idea before putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard). In my experience, it is the act of writing itself that discovers what it is that I want to say, and how to say it. Don't wait for perfection, because that becomes paralyzing, but create it. For me, often that creation happens through editing: parsing, framing, finding. It's often easier to do when plenty of words are already on the page.
"I can think of no other literary contest in Canada in which the winning works are so public and accessible. I heard from people all across the country who connected with my poem — a privilege writers can often only dream of, but that this contest makes possible."
Lise Gaston is the author of Cityscapes in Mating Season, which was named one of the 10 must-read books of 2017 by the League of Canadian Poets. Her other recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Brick, Canadian Notes and Queries, the Fiddlehead, the Malahat Review and Best Canadian Poetry in English.
Gaston won the 2021 CBC Poetry Prize for her poem James.
Bren Simmers says: "Let poems (and manuscripts) breathe in between revisions. Setting them aside for a few weeks or months allows you to have a fresh perspective when you revisit the work. Often, new ideas and revision strategies will become apparent.
"Read through the poems and note in pencil whether they are a check plus, a check, or a check minus poem. Be brutally honest with yourself. Remove the check minus poems (unless you can upgrade them to a check poem through revision. Sometimes I try to sneak a weak poem into a manuscript because it is thematically relevant, but this technique helps shed the dead weight.
"Another technique I learned from novelists about structuring a book is to print out your manuscript as a PDF with two pages per sheet (this helps save space). Cut these sheets up and tape them to a large wall with painter's tape. Look at them over the days and weeks that follow, and play with the order of the poems, moving them around until you get the right sequencing."
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, and a collection of poetry titled If, When. Her latest poetry collection, The Work, was a finalist for the 2024 Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry.
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.
Kyo Lee says: "Make time to write. This may sound obvious but I think the most important part of writing is, well, writing. Not thinking about or planning about writing, but actually writing, and giving oneself the time and space to write.
"Sometimes I try to brainstorm or plan out pieces in my head and think that I am stuck until I sit down, write down my thoughts, which inspire new thoughts and so on. For me, it's harder than I think to make time to write because it doesn't feel like a priority and especially with the pressure to write something "good". But it's better to write something that you may not like than to not write at all. So my advice would be to prioritize your craft and give yourself some freedom and time to write.
"So I think my advice is that you have to gaslight yourself a little bit into thinking that it's not hard at all. Tell yourself it'll be easy peasy, that you'll write that book in two months. And then once you're in it, you probably won't write that book in two months. But now it's too late to back out. You just gotta start and then see where that takes you."
Kyo Lee is a queer high school student from Waterloo, Ont. Her work is featured in PRISM International, Nimrod, The Forge Literary Magazine and This Magazine, among others. Her debut poetry collection is i cut my tongue on a broken country.
She is the youngest winner of the CBC Poetry Prize, for her poem lotus flower blooming into breasts, and the youngest finalist for the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award.
Rachel Robb says: "Loosening my grip on an endpoint — that imaginary podium, whatever you want to call it — has enriched my writing. And perhaps this is helpful for other writers to hear. This doesn't mean that having goals or dreams of being published isn't important, but it can help to water down the pressure to reach a finish line and relax into the everyday process of it all. Letting go has brought me closer to my own self and my writing has deepened as a result."
Robb is a Toronto-based writer and educator of Jamaican, Irish and Canadian heritage. Her poetry has been featured as a finalist in the Bridport Prize anthology and shortlisted for The Fiddlehead's Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize, The Alpine Fellowship and most recently, the Montreal International Poetry Prize.
Her work has also appeared in anthologies for Hamilton's gritLit Festival and The Alice Munro Festival of the Short Story, where she placed first and second, respectively. A graduate of the Humber School for Writers, she is currently working on her first collection of poetry.
Robb won the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize for her poem Palimpsest County.
