In a week where the 2026 Griffin Poetry Prize Longlist was announced and –surprise, surprise–NO Canadian poetry titles were included, despite there being a wealth of excellent Canadian poetry collections to draw from this past year, I am grateful that there are still Canadian prizes for poetry that actually celebrate, you guessed it, Canadian Poetry.
Enter the Al and Eurithe Purdy Poetry Prize which is entering its second year since being announced as a prize that recognizes “the best Canadian book of poetry published by an established Canadian poet of distinguished achievement and awards an annual prize of $10,000.” Wow!
I love that this is a poetry award for an established mid-career Canadian Poet, too, as we tend to celebrate youth in this country (just a fact), and not so much the veteran poets with “at least five traditionally published poetry books in print”. Indeed, the Al and Eurithe Poetry Prize is a terrific opportunity and aspirational award that celebrates a poet who keeps going after the first couple of difficult books. Usually by about the third book, most Canadian poets start to think more in terms of What can I say new that I did not already say in my first two books? At least, I did. Like wine, I think the quality of one’s writing only improves with age.
Last year, the poet A.F. Moritz won the inaugural Al and Eurithe Poetry Prize for Great Silent Ballad, his twenty-second volume, and everyone felt warmed by the announcement. Al Moritz is a master poet and a wonderful mentor to many younger Canadian poets so everyone felt aglow when his book won this new award.
This year, there are ten titles (Ten! Woohoo!) on the shortlist, and although, I would be lying if I didn’t say I am personally rooting for Evelyn Lau’s Parade of Storms which is a tremendous book, I would be equally happy with any of the nominated books winning this award. What an exiting opportunity for our mid-career and elder statesman Canadian poets! Unlike the Griffin Poetry Prize which seems to be a private party thrown in Toronto for International poets, while Canadian Poets sit at the kids table or in a pub down the street, the Al and Eurithe Purdy Poetry Prize is a homegrown award celebrating homegrown established Canadian Poetry talent. The shortlist–with five books–will be announced on April 2nd. What an exciting opportunity!
Here is the 2026 Al and Eurithe Poetry Prize Longlist:
- George Amabile – Seeing Things (Signature Editions)
- bill bissett – th book uv lost passwords 1 (Talonbooks)
- Marilyn Bowering – Frayed Linens (Exile Editions)
- Joseph Dandurand – I Would Like to Say Thank You (Nightwood Editions)
- Lorne Daniel – What is Broken Binds Us (University of Calgary Press)
- Evelyn Lau – Parade of Storms (Anvil Press)
- Karen Solie – Wellwater (Anansi Press)
- Gillian Sze – An Orange, A Syllable (ECW Press)
- Nicola Vulpe – On The News that Sagittarius A Grows Hungrier* (Guernica Editions)
- Tom Wayman – Out of the Ordinary (Harbour Publishing)
Chris Banks is an award-winning, Pushcart-nominated Canadian poet and author of seven collections of poems, most recently Alternator with Nightwood Editions (Fall 2023). His first full-length collection, Bonfires, was awarded the Jack Chalmers Award for poetry by the Canadian Authors’ Association in 2004. Bonfires was also a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Award for best first book of poetry in Canada. His poetry has appeared in The New Quarterly, Arc Magazine, The Antigonish Review, Event, The Malahat Review, The Walrus, American Poetry Journal, The Glacier, Best American Poetry (blog), Prism International, among other publications. Chris was an associate editor with The New Quarterly, and is Editor in Chief of The Woodlot – A Canadian Poetry Reviews & Essays website. He lives with dual disorders–chronic major depression and generalized anxiety disorder– and writes in Kitchener, Ontario.
The Woodlot 