3 'must-read' poetry book picks from the 2025 CBC Poetry Prize jurors
Carol Rose GoldenEagle, Paul Vermeersch and Britta B. will judge the 2025 CBC Poetry Prize.
The jury selects the shortlist and winner of the 2025 CBC Poetry Prize. A panel of established writers and editors from across Canada review the submissions and will determine the longlist from all the submissions.
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 have their work published on CBC Books.
Four finalists will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and have their story published on CBC Books.
The 2025 CBC Poetry Prize is open for submissions until June 1, 2025 at 4:59 p.m. ET.
We asked each juror to recommend a book they think poets should read before submitting to the CBC Poetry Prize.
A Calendar of Reckoning by Dave Margoshes, recommended by Carol Rose GoldenEagle
A Calendar of Reckoning takes a look back at youth in contrast with the heavy subject matter of one's own mortality. Although Margoshes writes about poets and poetry, the mainly lyrical poems focus on family, death and the experience of facing the death of our parents. The collection also explores the struggle of having to reconcile the reader's past and present.
Dave Margoshes writes short and long fiction and poetry on a farm west of Saskatoon. He has published several collections of short stories, including Bix's Trumpet and Other Stories, which was book of the year at the 2007 Saskatchewan Book Awards and a ReLit Award finalist, and A Book of Great Worth which was named one of Amazon's top hundred books for 2012. He has appeared six times in Best Canadian Stories and been a Journey Prize finalist for his book The Wisdom of Solomon.
Carol Rose GoldenEagle is a Cree and Dene writer, poet, playwright and musician. She was named the Saskatchewan Poet Laureate from 2021-2023. GoldenEagle's previous books include the novels Bearskin Diary, Bone Black and The Narrows of Fear, and the poetry collection Hiraeth.
GoldenEagle also writes children's books including Mother Earth: My Favourite Artist as well as an upcoming collection of poetry, Singing to the Moon, that will be released later this year.
Fugue with Bedbug by Anne-Marie Turza, recommended by Paul Vermeersch
In her second poetry collection Fugue with Bedbug, Anne-Marie Turza uses the fugue form to weave a series of poems about time and mortality. It is part musical reference, part portraiture, part essay and a musical score.
Turza is a poet and author who lives on Vancouver Island. Her other poetry collection, The Quiet, was a finalist for both the Gerald Lampert Memorial and Bronwen Wallace awards.
Paul Vermeersch is a poet, artist and editor from Toronto. He currently teaches at Sheridan College. Vermeersch holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Guelph for which he received the Governor General's Gold Medal. His other poetry collections include The Reinvention of the Human Hand, Self-Defence for the Brave and Happy and Shared Universe.
His eighth collection of poetry NMLCT will be published in September 2025.
Nomenclature by Dionne Brand, recommended by Britta Badour
Nomenclature by Dionne Brand collects eight volumes of the celebrated poet and author's work that were originally published between 1982 and 2010. With a critical introduction by the literary scholar and theorist Christina Sharpe, the book features a new long poem, the titular Nomenclature for the Time Being, which is a thoughtful and wide-ranging reflection on location, consciousness, time and the current state of the world.
Brand is an award-winning poet and novelist from Toronto. She won the Governor General's Literary Award for poetry and the Trillium Book Award for her 1997 collection Land to Light On. Her collection thirsty won the 2003 Pat Lowther Award. In 2009, she served as the poet laureate of Toronto. Her novel What We All Long For won the City of Toronto Book Award in 2006. She won the 2011 Griffin Poetry Prize for Ossuaries and in 2017, she was named to the Order of Canada.
Britta Badour, better known as Britta B., is an artist, public speaker and poet living in Toronto. She is the recipient of the 2021 Breakthrough Artist Award from the Toronto Arts Foundation. She was named one of CBC Books' 2023 writers to watch. Badour was among the finalists for 2024 Trillium Book Awards.
Badour teaches spoken word performance at Seneca College. She is also the poet-in-residence for Poems in Passage, the Toronto Transit Commission's poetry initiative.
