Hannah Green, Sandra Ridley and Bradley Peters are the 2024 winners of the League of Canadian Poets prizes.
The organization administers three poetry prizes to celebrate the year’s best published works — the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for debut books, Pat Lowther Memorial Award for books by Canadian women and Raymond Souster Award for books by League members.
The winner of each prize receives $2,000.
Green’s Xanax Cowboy won the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. It’s a poetry collection that follows the adventures of the Xanax Cowboy, a pill-popping, whiskey drinking woman with a reputation like a rattlesnake.
Xanax Cowboy won the 2023 Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry.
Green is a Winnipeg-based writer and poetry editor. She was a poetry finalist for the 2021 Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers.
As It Happens6:43Hannah Green and her dad, Chris, on her book Xanax Cowboy winning the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry
Winnipeg-based writer Hannah Green won the 2023 Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry. She and her dad, Chris, who went viral for his adorable supportive t-shirt, spoke with Nil Köksal on As It Happens.
Ridley won the Pat Lowther Memorial Award for Vixen. Composed of six chapters in varied forms, Vixen is a poetic foray into haunting tales of ecological collapse, hunting and domestic violence. Ridley offers a vulnerable exploration of cruelty and ultimately survival.
Ridley is a Saskatchewan-born poet currently based in Ottawa. She was a finalist for the 2017 Griffin Poetry Prize for her collection Silvija. Her other books include Fallout, Post-Apothecary and The Counting House.
Peters’ Sonnets from a Cell won the Raymond Souster Award.
In his debut collection, Sonnets from a Cell, Bradley Peters writes from personal experiences as a young man in the Canadian prison system. Combining lyrical verse with inmate speech, Sonnets from a Cell offers empathy and grace within moments of isolation and fear.
Peters is a poet and actor currently based in Mission, B.C. His poetry has been featured in numerous literary magazines. Sonnets from a Cell is his debut poetry collection.
Q22:45Bradley Peters: Sonnets from a Cell, solitary confinement, and how a sonnet is like prison
When the poet Bradley Peters discovered sonnets while studying poetry and creative writing, he knew it was the perfect form to write about his experience with incarceration as a teenager and young adult. Bradley talks to Tom about his new poetry collection, “Sonnets from a Cell,” what it felt like to be in solitary confinement, and how he “held on to his humanity” in prison.
Selina Boan, Alisa Kaplan and Roxanna Bennett were last year’s winners.