As we celebrate World Poetry Month this April, we wanted to bring attention to one of McGill’s own worldwide poetry endeavours.

Founded in 2010 by McGill alumnus Asa Boxer, the Montreal International Poetry Prize is an annual global poetry competition. With a prize of $20,000 awarded to one poet for a poem, the competition is judged by a jury of award-winning poets from all over the world, including Lorna Goodison, Heather Christle and Tanur Ojaide for the 2022 competition.

Since 2019, the Montreal International Poetry Prize has been overseen by McGill University’s Department of English. The following year, the international competition received nearly 5,000 entries from more than 100 nations around the world. Of these thousands of submissions from 2020, a select few were shortlisted and were combined to create The Montreal Poetry Prize Anthology 2020, available to students through the McGill Library.

With the 2022 competition having recently ended, the next competition of the Montreal International Poetry Prize will open for entries in January 2024.

For more great poetry check out our collection and the Redpath Book Display which has a great selection of poetry you can borrow. This display will be up for all of April 2023.