LCP Spoken Word Award: 2024 winners
Congratulations to the winners of the 2024 LCP Spoken Word Award!
The League of Canadian poets is proud to present the winners of the 2024 LCP Spoken Word Award, selected by Adeena Karasick and Charlie Petch: Donald Carr and Sean Meggeson!
Donald Carr
"What a wealth of talent we have, it was an honour to be a judge. There were poems that stayed with me after the full review of submissions, but none like Donald Carr’s “Lies My Father Taught Me”. It is a truly stunning performance. I was struck by how he held silence, changed characters with small adjustments, and deeply understands how to visually and emotionally present his poetry. I, as witness, felt so present in his anxiety and grief. He performed as if this were the first time he’d had to speak about the trauma he experienced, how he couldn’t even ask for the release of shame his son gave. I am still so moved by his presence and strength. One can tell that this is a performer who is at the height of the craft. I will never forget his poem, his tone, and the deep feelings it gave. Thank you Donald Carr for this important work on a truly difficult topic."
— Charlie Petch, LCP Spoken Word Award juror
Sean G. Meggeson
"With nuanced dynamism, wit and gravitas, Sean G. Meggeson’s extraordinary, “Post Pasolini Soma-Synthesis Elegy: A Drone Collage in 5 Parts,” fearlessly highlights language as a montage of shattered light, madness and healing --offering a model for thinking about alternative modes of communication and poetic innovation. Caressing the language of Pier Paolo Pasolini, psychotherapy and pop culture, sonically woven with linguistic, symbolic, social, personal and historical interventions, Meggeson’s masterwork unfolds as a deliciously textural play of absurdist mashups, porous aporias, paradox and desire; reminding us how the intralingual mingling of otherness and defamiliarity, fragmentation and collage, can foster new ways of thinking about language, history, religion, and inclusiveness in the midst of anxiety and trauma. Nomadic and diasporic; a celebration of polyphonic empowerment, promise and possibility."
— Adeena Karasick, LCP Spoken Word Award juror
Watch "Lies My Father Taught Me" by Donald Carr
Watch "Pasolini soma-synthesis elegy," collage poem in 5 parts by Sean G. Meggeson
From the Winners
“Vita brevis, ars longa. Life is short, and art is long. Acquiring and perfecting one’s expertise takes a long time, but alas, there is only a short time in this life to do it. Midway through my life's journey I’m delighted to be selected as a winner of the LCP Spoken Word Award. Blessed by Nature with a Jamaican birth, my mother sweated oceans of blood, sweat, and tears for my mind’s education. She said, “Son, if you don't know your worth, the world will always pay you less.” Adolescence overtook me in Toronto. a Griot creating Diasporic Dialogues. Knowledge has been expensive, but ignorance has cost me twice as much. Who knew that against all these odds, I'd end up sitting on a rainbow? Mom, if I ever stop loving you, it is because my heart has stopped beating. I say YES to LIFE!”
— Donald Carr, LCP Spoken Word Award winner
“As both a poet and psychotherapist, I ‘work’ with the spoken word with mindfulness and faith. Winning the LCP’s Spoken Word Prize helps affirm my relationship with the spoken word. It also announces a public participation within an active poetry community, The League of Canadian Poets. These affirmations are to me healing, agentive, and necessary. I am honoured and grateful.”
— Sean G. Meggeson, LCP Spoken Word Award winner
With his authentic tone and relatable approach, Donald Carr shares genuine stories of overcoming adversity and triumph that move the audience to take immediate action. At the request of Mr. Mandela’s government, Donald was invited to South Africa to facilitate workshops on conflict resolution–an approach he continues to take in his work. After witnessing Donald on stage, audiences are inspired to be authentic and seek greater happiness. Donald believes Heaven is right here–on earth. Only those who don’t know it–yet–seek to leave.
Sean G. Meggeson lives in Toronto, Canada, where he works as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist. He has written and lectured on such topics as Lacan & James Joyce, neurodiversity, and interspecies intersubjectivity. His poems have been published in various online and print journals. His chapbook, Cosmic Crasher and Other Poems has been published by Buttonhook Press, 2024. Meggeson received an M.A. in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Denver in 1996.
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About the jurors
Charlie Petch (they/them, he/him) is a disabled/queer/transmasculine multidisciplinary artist who resides in Tkaronto/Toronto. A poet, playwright, librettist, musician, lighting designer, and host, Petch was the 2017 Poet of Honour for the speakNORTH national festival, winner of the Sheri-D Golden Beret Award from The League of Canadian Poets (2020), and founder of Hot Damn it's a Queer Slam. Petch is a touring performer, as well as a mentor and workshop facilitator. Their debut poetry collection, Why I Was Late (Brick Books), won the 2022 ReLit Award, and was named "Best of 2021" by The Walrus. Their film with Opera QTO, Medusa's Children, premièred 2022. They have been featured on the CBC's Q, were the Writer In Residence for Berton House (2023), were long-listed for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2021. Their solo show "No one's special at the hot dog cart" debuted at Theatre Passe Muraille in 2024.
Adeena Karasick, Ph.D, is a New York based Canadian poet, performer, filmmaker, cultural theorist and media artist and the author of 18 books of poetry and poetics. Her Kabbalistically inflected, urban, Jewish feminist mashups have been described as “electricity in language” (Nicole Brossard), “proto-ecstatic jet-propulsive word torsion” (George Quasha), noted for their “cross-fertilization of punning and knowing, theatre and theory” (Charles Bernstein), “a twined virtuosity of mind and ear which leaves the reader deliciously lost in Karasick’s signature ‘syllabic labyrinth’” (Craig Dworkin); “demonstrating how desire flows through language, an unstoppable flood of allusion (both literary and pop-cultural), word-play, and extravagant and outrageous sound-work” (Mark Scroggins). Most recent books include, Ouvert: Oeuvre: Openings, visualized by Warren Lehrer, Ærotomania: The Book of Lumenations (both published Lavender Ink Press, 2023); Eicha: The Book of Lumenations film (NuJu Films, NY, 2023); Massaging the Medium: 7 Pechakuchas, (The Institute of General Semantics Press, 2022); Checking In (Talonbooks, 2018); and Salomé: Woman of Valor (University of Padova Press, Italy, 2017), the libretto for her Spoken Word opera; Salomé: Woman of Valor CD, (NuJu Records, 2020); and Salomé Birangona, translation into Bengali (Boibhashik Prokashoni Press, Kolkata, 2020). Honors include: 2023 Susanne K. Langer Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Symbolic Form (MEA), 2023 Inaugural League of Canadian Poets Spoken Word Award, 3-time recipient of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Award, Voce Donna Italia Award for contributions to feminist thinking, shortlisted for Outstanding Book of the Year Award (ICA, 2023). Karasick teaches Literature and Critical Theory for the Humanities and Media Studies Dept. at Pratt Institute, is Poetry Editor for Explorations in Media Ecology, Associate International Editor of New Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communication, and is Poet Laureate of the Institute of General Semantics. The “Adeena Karasick Archive” is established at Special Collections, Simon Fraser University.
About the LCP Spoken Word Award
Launched in winter 2023, the LCP Spoken Word Award consists of two awards, presented annually to two poets for a single poem or suite of poems up to 10 minutes in length.
With this award, the League celebrates the wide range of styles represented within the spoken word genre, from dub poetry to spoken word poetry to sound poetry and beyond. This award will recognize two poems or suites of poems that represent two distinct schools of spoken word poetry.
The League of Canadian Poets is Canada's only national professional poetry organization. The League serves the poetry community and promotes a high level of professional achievement through events, networking, projects, publications, mentoring and awards. We administer programs and funds for governments and private donors and encourage an appreciative readership and audience for poetry through educational partnerships and presentations to diverse groups. As the recognized voice of Canadian poets, we represents poets' concerns to governments, publishers, and society at large, and we maintain connections with similar organizations at home and abroad. The League strives to promote equal opportunities for poets from myriad literary traditions and cultural and demographic backgrounds.