bpNichol Chapbook Award News and Call for Submission

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS 2012 BPNICHOL CHAPBOOK AWARD 

A $2,000 prize will be awarded for the poetry chapbook judged to be the best submitted. Interested authors or publishers should submit three copies of a chapbook of poetry in English published in Canada in 2011. Chapbooks should be no less than 10 pages and no more than 48 pages. Submissions should include a brief C.V. of the author, plus address, telephone number, and email address. 

Send to: Meet the Presses / bpNichol Chapbook Award, PO Box 26, Station P, Toronto, Ontario M5S 2S6 The closing date for submissions to the 2012 competition is May 31, 2012. Please email Meet The Presses for more information: meetthepresses@gmail.com. 

ANNOUNCING A NEW ADMINISTRATIVE BODY FOR THE BPNICHOL CHAPBOOK AWARD 

In the spirit of the original Phoenix Chapbook Award, which was adjudicated for its first two years by Frank Davey and bpNichol, and continued as the bpNichol Chapbook Award for 23 years by Phoenix Community Works Foundation, the award recognizes excellence in Canadian poetry published in chapbook form. With the demise of Phoenix Community Works Foundation, the Meet the Presses collective is pleased to assume management of the award. 

Meet the Presses is a Toronto-based collective devoted to promoting micro, small and independent literary presses. This collective has come together in the spirit of the original Meet the Presses event begun in Toronto in the mid-1980s by Nicholas Power and Stuart Ross. Members of Meet the Presses have organized a variety of curated public events, and all the events focus on independent publishers of fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction. 

Meet the Presses – an unfunded and non-profit collective – consists of members Gary Barwin, Elisabeth de Mariaffi, Paul Dutton, Maria Erskine, Ally Fleming, Beth Follett, Leigh Nash, Nicholas Power, and Stuart Ross. Chapbooks written by members of the Meet the Presses collective are ineligible for the award. Authors of chapbooks published by members of the collective remain eligible for the award.

THE BPNICHOL CHAPBOOK AWARD 2011 WINNER 

Claudia Coutu Radmore for Accidentals (Apt. 9 Press)

HONOURABLE MENTIONS 2011 

Kevin McPherson Eckhoff, Game Show Reversed (BookThug) 

Toronto Poetry Vendors, Vol 2, No 1 (authors: Laurie D Graham, Sachiko Murakami, Aisha Sasha John, Linda Besner, Mathew Henderson, Nathaniel G Moore, Adam Seelig, Moez Surani, Souvankham Thammavongsa, Matthew Tierney) 

Special mention for excellence in production: JackPine Press 

The judges for this year’s competition were Maggie Helwig and Bill Kennedy.