Congratulations to Pujita Verma, winner of the 2022-2023 Broadsheet Contest!

Listen to “Tham Luang Cave Rescue by Pujita Verma:

Pujita Verma is an Indo-Canadian Poet & Illustrator. She was Mississauga’s Youth Poet Laureate (2018-2020), a Poetry In Voice National Finalist, and was recently longlisted for Palette Poetry’s Love & Eros Prize. Her work embraces themes of resilience and silence, culture and connection, memory, and matters of the heart. Pujita recently completed her BA in Political Science at Western University and works for the humanitarian organization War Child Canada.

Pujita Verma has won $300, publication in the 2023 Poem In Your Pocket Day Booklet, and a special broadsheet of their poem handcrafted by artist Briar Craig. 

The juror for this year’s Broadsheet Contest was Hollay Ghadery. Thank you for your hard work Hollay!

From our 2022-2023 juror, Hollay Ghadery:

This poem teeters on the brink of control and the complete loss of it, its lines rambling and then being pulled back to breathless, staccato sentiments. It’s a flow that mimics the tensions navigated in the poem: the forces in our lives that are out of our control and beyond our comprehension set perilously against our often impotent desire to try to command them nevertheless.

Honourable mentions

Our juror would also like to recognize these exceptional poems:

• BLOCKHOUSE by Nicholas Selig
• Anniversary by Kirsteen MacLeod

Hollay Ghadery is a multi-genre writer living in rural Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Her fiction, non-fiction, and poetry have been published in various literary journals and magazines, including The Malahat Review, Room, CAROUSEL, THIS, The Antigonish Review, Grain, and The Fiddlehead. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions’ MiroLand imprint in Spring 2021. Her debut collection of poetry, Rebellion Box, is due out with Radiant Press in spring 2023.

Meet the Broadsheet Artist

Briar Craig is a printmaking professor at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus.  He has an MFA in printmaking from the University of Alberta.  His recent work focuses on the interplay between imagery and text.  Taking Roland Barthes’ Death of the Author as a starting point he plays with the idea that we are all the authors of the works we see by juxtaposing a number of disparate elements in order to create narrative, interpretive opportunities for the viewer.

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LCP Cold Moon Contests

The Broadsheet Contest. What is a broadsheet? By definition, a broadsheet is a large piece of paper printed with information on one side only. In the world of poetry, a broadsheet is a great format in which to share or showcase one stand-out poem – winning this contest will surely do both! The Broadsheet Contest is a single poem contest seeking poems of 40 lines or less.

The League of Canadian Poets’ Cold Moon Contests, comprising of the Very Small Verse Contest and Broadsheet Contest are run annually November 15 – January 20, and winners are announced on World Poetry Day (March 21).