2025 LCP Annual General Meeting & Member Townhall

The 2025 Annual General Meeting will take place on Tuesday, June 24, 2025 at 2pm ET

Schedule, registration, and proxy voting

League of Canadian Poets Annual General Meeting: 2 pm to 3 pm ET

Break 3 pm to 3:30 pm ET

Member Townhall: 3:30 pm to 4:30 pm, ET.

Registration is required

Members unable to attend the AGM are encouraged to complete a proxy form in advance of the meeting. The proxy form allows members to cast their votes on agenda motions by indicating their vote, and assigning another member (who will be in attendance) to cast this vote on their behalf. 

If you are unable to attend the AGM live, this is an excellent way to help the League ensure quorum and keep the meeting moving smoothly! 

The proxy form allows members to indicate any eligible member as a proxy, or invites members to select members of the Board of Directors as their proxy. 

Meeting materials

  • 2025 AGM Member Package
  • 2024-2025 Annual Report
  • Draft 2024 AGM Minutes
  • Draft 2024-2025 Financial Statements

Member Townhall

Following a short break after the AGM, the Member Townhall will being with a brief presentation from the League, followed by presentations and readings from our community committees: BIPOC Poets Committee, Feminist Caucus, Parenting Poets Committee, Poets of Faith, and Senior Poets Caucus.

Members will then have approximately 35 minutes to raise questions and concerns with the League staff and Board, or simply socialize with their fellow members. The townhall will conclude at 4:30pm ET.

Registration for the Townhall is included with registration for the AGM.

A note from the Board: on the new 2025 member motion

Member Blaine Marchand (Ottawa, ON), with John Barton (Victoria, BC) as seconder and several poets from the Senior Poets' Caucus as signatories, has put forward the following motion for the 2025 AGM: 

That the League of Canadian Poets hold an in-person two-day conference in 2026 to mark the 60th anniversary of its founding;  

allow as many members as possible to participate, by arranging for key elements of the conference to be live-streamed via Zoom;  

make the event economically feasible for all by exploring every opportunity to arrange for the in-person conference to be held at a college/university residence and dining facilities; and  

include a variety of programming, such as a business meeting (AGM), readings, panel discussions, professional development opportunities and a book table.  

Response from the Board of Directors 

The Board cannot, and does not, support this motion due to the financial, staffing, and organizational impact of organizing an in-person conference: the suggested programming is not financially feasible, and does not align with the organization's purposes or values, including accessibility.  

The Board has an obligation to act in the best interests of the organization and in a way that ensures the financial stability of the League, as well as to consider how each action serves our membership and organizational purposes. After a careful examination of the potential for offering an in-person AGM and poetry conference, the Board has determined that hosting an in-person conference is not in the best interest of the organization.  

Summary

If a motion requiring the League to organize a multi-day conference were to pass, the organization would fail to achieve several of its Strategic Plan goals, including goals to increase regional presence across Canada, improve accessibility and equity, and stabilize the League’s finances.   

The staff time and budget required to execute a multi-day project would effectively eliminate our microgrants budget. To plan an event of this scale in 2026, work would need to begin immediately, and the League’s existing programs would face cuts and reductions. Additionally, prioritizing an expensive, multi-day, in-person event – as a national organization – would likely have a negative impact on the League’s standing with granters and funders, as the reach of the programming is extremely limited, and it would require a significant alteration to our proposed plans for which we receive operating funding.   

Although the proposal suggests making the conference accessible via livestreaming, which could increase member engagement, ultimately this proposal asks the League to devote an expense of $50,000 - $90,000, including staff costs, travel costs, and the cost of making meetings and events hybrid, accessible and in service to members.   

If an in-person AGM were to proceed, we would spend more than 10% of our budget to serve less than 3% of our members. 

Board and Director Responsibility 

The board has an obligation to act in the best interests of the organization and must be cognizant of the financial stability of the organization, how each action serves our membership and organizational purposes, and the long-term stability of the organization. After a careful examination of the potential for offering an in-person AGM and poetry conference, the board has determined that hosting an in-person poetry conference is not in the best interest of the organization.  

In 2024, the League was happy to bring free and low-cost online professional development opportunities to our membership, all of which saw greater engagement than any AGM and conference in the past thirteen years. 

The Board knows that our membership is passionate about community organizing, and the League has every intention of continuing to support member initiatives as much as possible with the organization’s limited human and financial resources. Community Committees and members who would like to see large-scale in-person programming are encouraged to reach out to potential partners in their regions (such as libraries, bookstores, or writers’ organizations) and organize as a grassroots collective or as an individual. The League is happy to distribute information about events, festivals, and literary conferences via social media, our newsletter, and directly to members.  

However, if staff are required to organize a multi-day, in-person event, the League will no longer have the capacity to support community-organized gatherings or festivals, and the organization will face severe financial and logistical challenges, including:  

  • Cancelling the planned 60 Events for 60 Years funding and promotional campaign  
  • Cancelling all remaining event microgrants for 2025-2026, and a significant portion of 2026-2027  
  • Severely limiting the organization’s capacity to fundraise, due to limited human resources  
  • Potentially jeopardizing the future of the League’s operating funding as a result of the poor ratio between use of funds and audience served  
  • Reducing or even eliminating all other professional development opportunities for members  
  • Halting the majority of work relating to inclusion, accessibility, equity, and diversity in the organization  
  • Likely Board and staff turnover  

Moving forward with this proposal is in direct opposition to the League’s Strategic Plan, mission, mandate, and vision. Voting in favour of this member motion would be a disservice to 95% of the League’s membership, and would essentially eliminate nearly a decade of work from the Board and staff to build nationwide relationships with funders, sponsors, poets, and community organizers.  

Members can find additional data and research on the projected costs and impact of an in-person conference in their member package.

Note from the Senior Poets Caucus on the 2025 Member Motion

In light of board and staff’s fiscal concerns and their excellent plans for 2026, including the 60 for 60 initiative, the Senior Poets Caucus will make a friendly amendment to its own motion on June 24 to move the League to hold an in-person conference in 2027.

Members wishing to vote in favour of this motion as well as on all other agenda items may complete a proxy voting form here: https://airtable.com/app2qFwtHQwZT2wfc/paglwiFSttgO2mV9Y/form

Please be sure to select "cast my vote as indicated in this form *and* on matters not indicated in this form so that your vote may also count on the amended motion.

Alternatively, you may use this proxy form (click to download), provided by Blaine Marchand and John Barton, to assign Eric Folsom as your proxy to vote in favour of the member motionPlease note that the attached form only casts a vote on the member motion. The completed form may be sent to nicole@poets.ca by 1pm ET on Tuesday, June 24, or to Blaine Marchand (blainemarchand@hotmail.com) by 4pm on Monday, June 23.

Background

The League has not held an in-person national conference since 2019 in St. John’s. Up until then, the conference was held annually since the League’s founding in 1966 in cities across Canada, with programming evolving to answer the times as well as changing member needs.

In 2020, the League successfully rose to the challenge posed by the pandemic by migrating the national conference online in a reduced format and has continued to stage it online in the years since. It’s justified doing so initially because Covid continued to pose a threat to members’ health in group settings and because it has allowed members who might not have otherwise been able to attend an in-person conference for a variety of reasons, including scheduling conflicts, time availability, and cost. However, what the League had once mounted as an in-person, two- or three-day-long AGM has devolved solely to holding the annual business meeting that is required by law—as well as, in recent years, a discretionary town hall—so the membership may ratify the League’s plans and budget for the year to come, the previous year’s audited financial statements, and other pertinent business requiring member input, including the reorganization of the League. Other programming, like the Anne Szumigalski Lecture, that was presented at in-person conferences prior to 2020, is now either offered online at other times of the year or not offered at all.

The Senior Poets Caucus commends past and present board members as well as the League’s staff for piloting the League through the past five difficult years. However, we believe that League members have suffered from not meeting face to face. It’s time for the League to resume holding an in-person national conference for the benefit of the poets it serves and of poetry itself.

What this motion aspires to renew in the League

The Senior Poets Caucus believes that an in-person national conference held over two days or more will allow the League to foster a greater sense of community than it can online by bringing members physically together in an atmosphere of mutual encouragement through panels, lectures, and workshops of vital interest of them.

An in-person national conference gives members, whether emerging or established, the opportunity to share their experiences and insights with one another in ways that build genuine relationships and present opportunities for future collaboration. It breaks down barriers, with members less isolated from one another geographically, culturally, and generationally.

An in-person national conference allows members to connect and learn from their peers, many of whom have editing and publishing expertise, as well as from key stakeholders in writing and publishing who before the pandemic were often invited to attend, including book and magazine publishers, granting-agency representatives, librarians, booksellers, and reading-series and festival organizers.

An in-person national conference facilitates networking between members and provides them with multiple opportunities to discuss, both formally and informally, their work with one another. This generates a shared sense of belonging to a poetry collective that embraces the country, a cohesiveness that is composed of many thriving poetry communities. An in-person conference allows poets to exchange or sell their books at a book table. Most poets increase their sales and readership at in-person events.

An in-person conference allows the League to host workshops and panels on publishing, writing practice, and the business of writing that are delivered by writers who represent diverse aspects of and approaches to poetry in Canada. It provides members with the opportunity to celebrate robustly the nominees and winners of League’s many awards, including the new Lifetime Achievement Award, that the League administers each year. Keynote speakers may deliver the Anne Szumigalski Lecture, speak elsewhere during the conference, and, importantly, converse with an audiences physically seated before them.

An in-person national conference allows the League to celebrate the poetry community of the city where it is held by featuring local writers on panels, inviting them to give the Anne Szumigalski Lecture or other keynote addresses, and to give workshops. Local poets will naturally compose a significant portion of conference attendance with the fees they pay defraying conference expenses incurred on behalf of all members wherever they live. Some local poets may be willing to billet members from other parts of Canada and beyond who might not otherwise be able to attend an in-person conference. A local poet or poets may also be available to help plan and stage the conference.

Poetry is a solitary profession. When gathered together, members may more easily meet peers similarly passionate about poetry, whether they are new faces or old friends, beginners or writing veterans. In-person national conferences have an energy to them that is so exciting, they inspire the introverted and gregarious alike to stay focused on their work and to continue writing.

An in-person national conference breaks down the isolation that technology-driven, online meetings only partially address because participants, however connected they may feel through WIFI, are still siloed in their own homes. Online-meeting platforms do not rise to the challenges faced by those rural members who may barely be on the grid due to the unreliability of their internet service—or even be off-grid due to its total absence. Being online is its own kind of privilege.

Aspects of an in-person national conference (the annual business meeting, the Anne Szumigalski Lecture) may also be streamed live and/or posted online post-conference to allow members unable to attend physically in any given year to benefit from the conference programming and to participate in the decision-making process.

An in-person national conference allows members to initiate and maintain life-long personal and professional friendships and mentorships. The long-lasting benefits of in-person contact at at an in-person conference, whether in the whole, in groups, or one-on-one, are invaluable, for they help poets to grow and succeed as creators. This, we believe, is the core reason why the League of Canadian Poets was founded and has lasted as a vital organization for almost sixty years.

In absence of such in-person national conferences, the Senior Members Caucus fears that members will increasingly lose touch with one another, let alone ever meet. We fear that the League itself will lose touch with its origins, its evolving reasons to be, and its ability to maintain a legacy upon which present and future members may build a living poetry that will thrive in the decades to come.

Members can find additional information on the Senior Poets Caucus proposal, including what an in-person conference could look like, in their member package.