2026 Pamela Paige Porter Poetry Prize Finalists
Celebrating the finalists for the 2026 Pamela Paige Porter Poetry Prize!
Congratulations to the finalists for the inaugural Pamela Paige Porter Poetry Prize (PPPPP)!
The PPPPP awards an annual prize of $2,000 to a book-length collection of poetry that demonstrates a masterful execution of the themes of the beauty and meaning found in everyday life, empathy and connection to nature, wonder in creation, celebration of the natural world, grief in witnessing the destruction of nature, and hope for healing and conserving the enviro nment we all share – all themes that are present in the work of Pamela Porter.
This unique poetry contest celebrates book-length poetry collections (published or unpublished) and honours both emerging and established poets. This prize accepts only anonymous submissions, ensuring unbiased evaluation of each work.
The winner will be announced on Wednesday May 6, 2026!
About the finalists
Jody Baltessen is an award-winning poet, writer and archivist. Her work explores place and the archive, drawing on the materiality and layered meanings of landscapes and records, and the history of the archive itself. Her work can be found online at On Creative Writing, The Goose: A Journal of Arts, Environment, and Culture in Canada, and Pangyrus, and in print in Prairie Fire, Grain, TNO: The New Quarterly, and elsewhere. She lives in Winnipeg on Treaty 1 Territory / Homeland of the Red River Metis.
"Intangible Things, my first full-length manuscript, is the product of years of working alone in cracks of time at home, in coffee shops, archives and libraries with the generative hum of white noise for company, and in community with other writers. In a country so filled with outstanding writers and remarkable books, sending my book out was both exhilarating and terrifying. It's an incredible honour to have Intangible Things selected as a finalist for the Pamela Paige Porter Poetry Prize - I am thrilled and energized to be recognized in this way! Thanks to the League of Canadian Poets for creating this award, and for opening it up to unpublished works as well. Special thanks to the judges for their time and commitment to poetry in Canada. I look forward to reading the work of all the finalists. Best wishes to all!"
Emily Nilsen is a writer and the author of Otolith. Her second poetry collection, Drawdown, is forthcoming in Spring 2027 (Goose Lane Editions / icehouse). She currently lives and works within Sinixt homelands in the upper Columbia River watershed, Ky̓ʕamlúp (Nelson, BC).
Tazi Rodrigues (she/her) is a writer and aquatic biologist from Winnipeg who lives on the unceded land of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation in Ottawa, ON. Her poems have most recently appeared in filling Station, periodicities, and Maisonneuve. She is working on a manuscript about community and soundscapes.
"I am so honoured that my collection is a finalist for the inaugural Pamela Paige Porter Poetry Prize! Community Association largely exists on my laptop (sometimes escaping to be edited on my wall), so as the title suggests, it is a joy to see it resonating with others and especially in the context of engagement with the natural world: hope, grief, and celebration. Thank you to the magazine editors who have supported the constituent poems, and thank you to the jurors and the League of Canadian Poets!"
Ellie Sawatzky (@elliesawatzky) grew up in the territory of the Anishinaabe Nation in Treaty 3 (Kenora, Ontario), and currently lives, works, and plays on the unceded, ancestral, and traditional territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples (Vancouver). A UBC MFA alum, she is the author of two poetry collections: None of This Belongs to Me (Nightwood Editions, 2021) and Hottest Smartest Self (ECW Press, forthcoming spring 2028). Recent poems have appeared in The Walrus, The Fiddlehead, EVENT, and elsewhere. She works as an editor and is founder and facilitator of the Strathcona Poetry Studio.
"I'm pleased, proud, privileged, and pumped to be a finalist for the inaugural PPPPP. In writing Hottest Smartest Self, I challenged myself to be radically honest with some of the ugliest, darkest parts of myself and the world, and in doing so I found staggering, unexpected beauty, deep grief, and healing. This award celebrates all of those things, and I'm so honoured to be a part of it. Big thanks to the jurors, the League, and Pamela Porter."
Sue Sinclair (she/her) grew up in Newfoundland on the ancestral homelands of the Beothuk. She is the author of six previous collections of poetry, including most recently Almost Beauty: New and Selected Poems (Goose Lane Editions, 2022), winner of New Brunswick’s Fiddlehead Poetry Book Prize. Heaven’s Thieves (Brick Books, 2016) won the Pat Lowther Award for the best book of poetry by a Canadian woman. Sue teaches creative writing at the University of New Brunswick on Wəlastəkwey territory, land of the “beautiful and bountiful river."
“It’s heartening to know there’s a prize that recognizes the importance of relationships with our more-than-human kin—it’s never been more crucial to think and feel our way into being more grateful and respectful co-habitants of the planet. Plus, you’ve got to love a prize whose acronym is 5 P’s!”
About the jury
Puneet Dutt is a Poetry Editor at The Fiddlehead. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry London, The Rumpus, Southern Indiana Review, World Literature Today, and Best Canadian Poetry 2026. Her debut collection, The Better Monsters (Mansfield Press), was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award and shortlisted for the Raymond Souster Award. Born in New Delhi and raised in Jersey City, she lives in Markham, Ontario, with her partner and two children.
Rion Levy is a poet, writer, and literary interventionist from Southern Ontario. He has served as an editor on 7 books and numerous newspaper, magazine, and academic journal issues. He has published over a hundred articles, reviews, poems and pieces of poetic prose, in various Canadian and international journals and magazines. His debut collection of poems, Poems of the End Times, was published in May 2023 by Olympia Publishers. He is most concerned about the stories we’ve forgotten we’ve already told, and just what that says about us.
Cassidy McFadzean is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Crying Dress (House of Anansi, 2024). Her fiction has appeared in Joyland, The Walrus, Hazlitt, and Dead Writers (Invisible Publishing, 2025). Cassidy is a spring resident at the McCormack Writing Center in Portland, Oregan and is the 2025-2026 Poet-in-Residence at Arc Poetry Magazine.
About Pamela Paige Porter
Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Pamela Porter earned a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, in 1978, and a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from University of Montana, Missoula, MT, in 1980, where she studied under Richard Hugo. Pamela immigrated to Canada in 1994, where she joined workshops with Patrick Lane and Lorna Crozier. Patrick Lane called her "a poet to be grateful for." Her work has earned many accolades, including the inaugural Gwendolyn MacEwan Poetry Prize, the Malahat Review's 50th Anniversary Poetry Prize, the Our Times Poetry Award for political poetry, the FreeFall Magazine Poetry Award, the Prism International Grand Prize in Poetry, the Vallum Magazine Poem of the Year Award, as well as the Raymond Souster and Pat Lowther Award shortlists. Her novel in verse, The Crazy Man, won the Governor General's Award, the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year for Children Award, the TD Canadian Children's Literature Award and a multitude of other prizes. Both The Crazy Man and her later novel in verse, I'll Be Watching, are required reading in schools and colleges across Canada and the U.S. Pamela lives on a farm near Sidney, B.C., with a menagerie of rescued horses, dogs and cats.