About the League
The League of Canadian Poets is the professional organization for established and emerging Canadian poets. Founded in 1966 to nurture the advancement of poetry in Canada, and the promotion of the interests of poets, it now comprises over 800 members. The League serves the poetry community and promotes a high level of professional achievement through events, networking, projects, publications, mentoring and awards. It administers programs and funds for governments and private donors and encourages an appreciative readership and audience for poetry through educational partnerships and presentations to diverse groups. As the recognized voice of Canadian poets, it represents their concerns to governments, publishers, and society at large, and maintains connections with similar organizations at home and abroad. The League strives to promote equal opportunities for poets from every literary tradition and cultural and demographic background.
Members of the League are professional poets who are actively contributing to the development, growth, and public profile of poetry in Canada. We are happy to have members from all across Canada at all stages in their careers, and we are proud of the valuable network of writers this has created! If you are interested in becoming a member of the League, check out our membership page.
Mission
The League of Canadian Poets supports Canadian poets and poetry in Canada.
Mandate
To enhance the status of poets and foster professional poetry communities. The League works to enlarge the audience for poetry by encouraging publication, performance, education, and recognition of Canadian poetry locally, nationally, and internationally, and supports equitable and inclusive freedom of expression in Canada.
Vision
A representative and thriving culture of poets and poetry lovers.
Our Values
Inclusiveness
Creating a welcoming community to all poets
Representation
Ensuring League membership is representative of all poets in Canada and represents the diverse interests of its members and community
Accessibility
Removing access barriers to membership, including financial barriers to marginalized groups; setting a standard for content and event accessibility
Innovation
Commitment to relevancy and value for members
Professionalism
Demonstrating a professional standard for poetry, particularly in paying opportunities for
poetry
Our Team
Our Board of Directors
Rayanne Haines
Henrik Slegtenhorst
Jaclyn Desforges
Michael Andrews
Stuart Ian McKay
Frances Boyle
(on Temporary Hiatus)
Tracy Hamon
Statements of Support from the League of Canadian Poets
We support the Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop and stand in solidarity with the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and PEN America in condemning all hate crimes against Asians and Asian Canadians, particularly the rise of these offenses since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
We stand in solidarity with Black, Indigenous, and other marginalized communities who have been the targets and victims of racism, prejudice, police brutality, and acts of violence. We support all who speak out, take action, and peacefully protest to bring an end to systemic racism.
League Logos
If you are partnering with the League, please use either of these logos on your promotional materials.
LCP Logo black rectangle transparent background
Black Circle Logo transparent background
Documents about the League
Support the League
What does poetry mean to you?
We are incredibly proud of and humbled by the role we play in supporting and amplifying the voices of Canada’s incredible poets and their contributions to the Canadian – and global – poetry community. Poetry does so much: it can elicit emotion, provide information, construct images, build worlds, strengthen bonds, tell stories, teach us to listen, build empathy, catch our attention. Poems are gifts that we can share, that we can hold close and return to when we need them.
It takes more than just a poet to keep poetry alive and well in Canada: we need writers of poetry, readers of poetry, and partners in poetry.
Donations to the League help us grow and sustain our outreach programs (like Poetry Pause), create paid publication opportunities for poets (like the LCP Chapbook Series), support our awards in recognition of the incredible talents in Canadian poetry, and better connect and support our hundreds of poet members across Canada. Your donations to the League go directly towards furthering our goal of nurturing a professional poetic community in Canada. Through funding, awards, mentorship, and publication, we aim to bring poetry into the lives of everyday Canadians, while supporting the amazing poets who can make that happen.
History of the League
Introduction
Established in 1966, the League is Canada’s largest professional organization for established and emerging Canadian poets. Founded by a group of Toronto poets, the League has nurtured the advancement of poetry in Canada and promoted the interests of poets for over 50 years. The League serves the poetry community and promotes a high level of professional achievement through events, networking, projects, publications, mentoring, and awards. As the recognized voice of Canadian poets, it represents their concerns to governments, publishers, and society at large, and maintains connections with similar organizations at home and abroad. The League strives to promote equal opportunities for poets from every literary tradition and cultural and demographic background.
Members of the League are professional poets who are actively contributing to the development, growth, and public profile of poetry in Canada. We are happy to have members from all across Canada at all stages in their careers, and we are proud of the valuable network of writers this has created! If you are interested in becoming a member of the League, check out our membership page.
We celebrated our 50th anniversary in 2016! You can find some of our favourite finds from the last 50 years over on the LCP50 page. For a short history of the League from 1966 to 1995, you can download our online publication “A Selective History of the League of Canadian Poets.”
1966-1970
The League was born on August 20, 1966, when Ron Everson, Raymond Souster, Louis Dudeck, Ralph Gustafson, and Michael Gnarowski met to discuss founding a guild to better serve the interest of English-speaking poets in Canada.
Souster asked John Robert Colombo to become the group’s first organizer and he agreed. Meetings were held, often in Colombo’s home in Toronto, over the next year and the name League of Canadian Poets was adopted that first winter.
To publicize the fledgling organization and its members, the week of March 25-31, 1968, fifteen poets read at 24 public library locations with a gala Sunday reading at the Central Library. Audiences ranged from 4 to 575, and it became clear that the organization required elected officers and a mandate to follow up on the success of this first venture and to expand it nation-wide.
The first Annual General Meeting took place on the weekend of October 18-20, 1968. The registration fee of $5 included that year’s membership dues; 40 poets were present. Souster was elected President and Douglas Lochhead was elected Secretary, both for two year terms. By the time the League’s first Newsletter appeared in November 1968, the League had 67 members.
For the first years of its existence, the League concentrated on organizing poetry tours. Poetry festivals were held in Metro Toronto in the spring of 1969 and 1970, the predecessors of today’s (W)rites of Spring League readings.
1970s
In 1971 Gerald Lampert became the League’s first tour coordinator, his salary paid by a grant from what was then called the Province of Ontario Council for the Arts (POCA), and Arlene Lampert the first Executive Secretary. At the same time, the Canada Council granted $10,000 to sponsor a poetry tour by 23 poets who gave 10 readings at 10 universities across the country. In addition, some 70-80 readings were given in Ontario high schools, funding coming from POCA. League membership now stood at 78 poets. In 1971, annual membership fees were raised to $7.50 per year.
Over the next several years, League members debated, discussed, and voted on issues ranging from salaries to membership dues to membership criteria. The mid-seventies saw a great rise in League programming and media. Who’s Who in the League of Canadian Poets, a catalogue of League member, was published and distributed to libraries, media, bookstores, and educational institutions. Associate, Honorary, and Life membership categories were introduced, and membership fees were raised to $50 per year.
1980s and 1990s
In 1982, over 20 members of the League brought a motion to the AGM to establish the Feminist Caucus, a committee that would “examine the status of and the opportunities for women in the field of Canadian Poetry.”
Just one year later, in 1983, spoken word and dub poetry became a contentious issue among League members and leadership, as it was debated whether the oral, lyric art form was poetry, song, or theatrical experience. After much debate, membership criteria were expanded to include dub and spoken word poets.
The late 80s saw the establishment of the League’s first national poetry contest, which published 50 winners in an anthology titled Garden Varieties. The 9th annual contest, held in 1995, received over 4,500 entries and raised $27,000 for the League. In addition to this contest, the League also founded the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award.
In 1992, the Feminist Caucus celebrated its 10th anniversary, and established its Living Archives Series, a collection of contributions to feminist thought, discussion of sexual politics, literary theory, and women’s history as experienced or shared in, during, and through the panels organized by the Caucus at League AGMs.
By the mid-90s, the League was sharing a Toronto office with the Playwrights Union of Canada and the Periodical Writers Association of Canada, and was working hard to stabilize revenue streams while facing potentially massive cuts to government funding.
In 1998, the League celebrated National Poetry Month for the first time.
2000s and 2010s
The early 2000s were dedicated to stabilizing the administration of the League, reducing debt, and increasing member engagement. Strategies were developed for popularizing National Poetry Month, growing the membership, and fund development, but in 2003 were faced with severe financial issues, forcing staff and program cuts.
Fundraising efforts through the 2000s and early 2010s were able to recover from accumulated debt, and support the establishment of many new programs, including the Jessamy Stursberg Poetry Prize for young adults, the Raymond Souster Award, the PK Page Mentorship program, and the Anne Szumigalski Lecture Series.
2015 brought about the start of a major staff turnover, which brought new eyes to the League’s programs and finances. The latter half of the 2010s prioritized redeveloping community partnerships, reviewing membership needs and concerns, and strengthening funder relations while growing programming and increasing national member access to League benefits.
FAQ
Find some commonly asked general questions and answers about the LCP. For specific FAQs, please see: Membership FAQ, Funding FAQ, and Book Awards.