The Montreal International Poetry Prize Mission
We are committed to encouraging the creation of original works of poetry, to building cross-national readership and to exploring the world’s Englishes.
Who We Are
The Montreal International Poetry Prize is a non-profit organization comprised of an Advisory Board, an Editorial Board, a Prize Judge, directors and interns. The editors and prize judge are chosen anew each year. The staff is comprised of poetry lovers with diverse backgrounds who want to get poets together from all over the world in the spirit of fun and competition, to consider the various Englishes of the world and to think of poetry in global terms.
Funding Model
The first Montreal Prize has been made possible by a generous and anonymous $50,000 catalyst donation.
Though we are always seeking sponsors to help with funding in future years, we hope that our innovative community funding model will allow us to deliver the world’s biggest poetry competition independently if necessary.
In other words, our goal is to deliver a major annual poetry prize funded directly by poets themselves, turning the historic patronage model on its head.
This funding model is made possible thanks to those who support the Montreal Prize directly by participating in it. Their entry fees go towards paying the editors and covering other costs associated with the Montreal Prize. Along with the support of our catalyst funding and any future sponsorship, the entry fee makes the Montreal Prize happen.
The Montreal Prize is meant to be a truly global effort and so we want our fees to reflect the fact that some countries are richer than others. Therefore, we’ve decided to subsidize entries from less wealthy countries in order to encourage more equal participation.
In order to be as objective as we can in the allocation of the different fees, we’ve used the UN Human Development Index to distinguish between developed and developing nations. Please go here for more details.
As a not-for-profit organization, any extra funds we can generate after we’ve covered all our costs will go towards other poetry-related projects. In this way, the Montreal Prize has the potential to become an annual means of raising funds for promoting and supporting poetry around the world, including direct financial support for poets and the creation of a dynamic global poetry centre. Like most poetry ‘competitions’, the Montreal Prize will then be a fundraiser, in our case for all manner of activities that will promote global poetry.
For more information on our funding model, please go here.
If you’d like to sponsor the Montreal Prize, please go here.
Staff
Directors
Peter Abramowicz was born in Montreal and earned an engineering degree (BME) at McGill University. He opened his own consulting practice, A2Zed consulting, and is now a top deployment specialist and business intelligence project leader. Peter has over 12 years of experience helping organizations of all types achieve greater potentials, including top tier institutions such as Mutual of Omaha, Expedia Travel, Hasbro, and Estee Lauder.
Asa Boxer is a poet and literary critic whose poems, articles and reviews have appeared in poetry journals in Australia, Belgium, Canada and the UK. His books are The Mechanical Bird (2007) and Skullduggery (2010).
Nyla Matuk was born in Winnipeg and now lives in Toronto. Her poetry includes the chapbook Oneiric (2009) and the full-length collection Sumptuary Laws (2012). Her poetry, short fiction, essays, and journalism have appeared in numerous publications, including The Globe and Mail, Canadian Architect magazine, Prism International, The Walrus, Maisonneuve and elsewhere.
Talya Rubin is a Montreal born poet, playwright and theatre creator/performer. Her poetry has garnered several awards. She has worked in arts marketing, audience development, and digital marketing and development. She has taught acting at NIDA (National Institute of Dramatic Art, Sydney), AFTRS (Australian Film Television and Radio School) and McGill University. Talya’s first book of poetry is due to be published in 2014.
UK Media Contact
Kris Anderson is a Tutor and Lecturer in English Literature for the University of Oxford (St. Hilda’s College) and an Associate Lecturer in the Humanities for the Open University. She has also worked as a campaigner and researcher for various non-profit organisations and as a contributor to several European literary reviews and magazines.
Interns
Mirka Snyder Caron earned a DEC in Sciences, Letters and Arts at Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf, Montreal. She has published a few poems in inter-collegial competitions and has won various prizes for her literary work at this level. Caron has an ongoing interest for literature, philosophy and culture, and continues to write while studying for a law degree at Université de Montréal.
Shreya Jalali is pursuing a joint-honours BA&Sc in English Literature and Biomedical Science at McGill University. Her other interdisciplinary ventures include national science fairs and international debating. She works on the staff of the McGill Journal of Medicine and is currently a Research Associate in McGill’s Faculty of Medicine, studying the physiology of speech.
Lucinda Tang is completing her Bachelor of Civil Law and Bachelor of Laws at McGill University. She has won national competitions in classical piano and published her poetry in various journals. In 2005, at the age of 16, she was selected as prizewinner for Radio-Canada’s nation-wide ‘Young Artists’ award. She writes poetry and songs for her independent music project.
Graphic Consultants
David Drummond worked for ten years as a senior art director for the advertising firm Cossette Communications before he set up his own graphic design business, Salamander Hill Design in 2001. Twenty of his book covers have been selected in the best fifty covers of the year competition held by the AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) in New York. He has won multiple awards in the Annual Communication Arts Design competition held in Palo Alto, California and in the AAUP (American Association of University Presses) cover competition. He works for a range of presses and publishers from the small independents to the big publishing houses in New York, and many University presses in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. All of the work is done on the second floor of a 200 year old farmhouse in Elgin where, thanks to the wonders of the internet, he works for clients around the world.
Matt Huculak is a Postdoctoral Fellow of English Literature at Dalhousie University; his work examines the rise of British modernism in periodical literature, and he is currently building a digital repository for twentieth-century Canadian texts for Editing Modernism in Canada. His non-academic work includes publishing, web design, and printing.
Cofounder
Len Epp earned his D.Phil in English Literature from Balliol College, Oxford, and then spent two and a half years working as an investment banker in London. In 2008 he moved to Montreal to devote some years to writing and nonprofit work. From mid-2010 to mid-2012, he helped conceptualize, develop, build, and run the Montreal Prize.
