Carol Rose GoldenEagle, Paul Vermeersch and Britta B. to judge 2025 CBC Poetry Prize
The winner will receive $6,000, a writing residency and have their work published on CBC Books
Carol Rose GoldenEagle, Paul Vermeersch and Britta B. will judge the 2025 CBC Poetry Prize.
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.
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.
In 2021, she published the poetry collection Essential Ingredients and the following year she published Stations of the Crossed.
In Stations of the Crossed, Cree/Dene writer GoldenEagle uses her childhood memory of the church rite "stations of the cross" as a springboard for critical reflection, examining the dark legacy of the residential school system, church and government policies and their ongoing impacts on Indigenous people today.
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.
NMLCT: Poems is a collection of poems all identically formed with precisely 16 lines as if they were mass produced. They explore a world constructed by The Algorithm where no one knows what to believe because of misinformation and computer-generated hallucinations. They also raise hope for the possibility to escape this disorienting society.
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.
For Britta Badour, storytelling is grounded by her family, community and experience of Blackness. In her debut collection, Wires That Sputter, she has taken on translating the beauty of spoken word to poems for the page.
- Britta Badour's powerful poetry is inspired by her family, community and her experience of Blackness
Wires That Sputter is an intimate collection of poetry which plays with form and punctuation. Badour explores pop culture, sports, family dynamics and Black liberation.
The jury will select the shortlist and winner. A panel of established writers and editors from across Canada review the submissions and will determine the longlist from all the submissions.
The longlist, shortlist and winner will be announced in fall 2025.
Last year's winner was Rachel Robb for her poem Palimpsest County.
The CBC Literary Prizes have been recognizing Canadian writers since 1979. Past winners include Susan Musgrave, Lorna Crozier, Alison Pick, Michael Ondaatje and Carol Shields.
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If you're looking to submit to the Prix de poésie Radio-Canada, you can enter here.
The 2026 CBC Short Story Prize will open in September and the CBC Nonfiction Prize will open in January.
