LCP Spoken Word Award: 2024 shortlist
Winners announced Tuesday, September 24, 2024
The League of Canadian poets is proud to present the shortlist of the 2024 LCP Spoken Word Award! Selected by Adeena Karasick and Charlie Petch, this shortlist celebrates the wide range of styles represented within the spoken word genre, from dub poetry to spoken word poetry to sound poetry and beyond.
Congratulations to all the shortlisted poets!
Subscribe to Poetry Pause and find the shortlisted poets featured in Spoken Word Saturday!
About the shortlisted poets
Angelic Goldsky
"When Facebook Killed Me (Notes on Deadnames in the Afterlife)"
Donald Carr
"Lies My Father Taught Me"
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.
Faith Paré
"my little thingliness (SCRUB-A-DUB-DUB BEBOP)"
Faith Paré is a poet of Afro-Guyanese ancestry. She has performed at national arts centres including the Art Gallery of York University, La Centrale galerie Powerhouse, and the Winter Garden Theatre, and served as curator of the Atwater Poetry Project from 2021 to 2023. Faith is the winner of the 2024 Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers in Poetry from the Writers’ Trust of Canada, and was the inaugural awardee of the Quebec Writers' Federation's Mairuth Sarsfield Mentorship under the guidance of Gillian Sze. She is currently at work on her first collection of poetry. faithpare.com.
Gary Barwin
"For William Blake"
Gary Barwin (garybarwin.com) is a writer, multimedia artist, performer and musician and the author of 32 books including Scandal at the Alphorn Factory: New and Selected Short Fiction 2024-1984 and the national bestselling novel Yiddish for Pirates which won the Leacock Medal and the Canadian Jewish Literary Award, was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award and the Giller Prize and was long listed for Canada Reads. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario.
MayaSpoken
"Polar Bears"
MayaSpoken is an award-winning multi-disciplinary artist, activist, public speaker, healer and educator. She uses the gift of words to share her story, advocate for others and promote safe spaces and practices for healing and self-expression. At 22 years old, she has given her first Ted Talk and became the author of poetry novel Warriors in Broad Daylight. MayaSpoken is the founder of Tell ‘Em Girl Women’s Spoken Word Showcase and Loud Black Girls, two platforms giving women identifying individuals the space to be themselves loudly and unapologetically. In 2019, she released her first single ”Without You” and is now pursuing her Bachelors Degree.
Sean G. Meggeson
Pasolini soma-synthesis elegy collage poem in 5 parts
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.
Tahira Rajwani
A suite of four poems
Tahira Rajwani (she/her) is a South Asian spoken word artist based in Mississauga, Ontario, whose work is rooted in themes of diaspora and women's empowerment. She was recently runner-up in Button Poetry's 2022 Poem Cover Contest and a nominee for the Emerging Literary Arts category of the 2024 Mississauga Arts Awards. As a recipient of a 2023 Didihood grant and a 2024 Mississauga Arts Council Microgrant, Tahira competed at the Womxn of the World Poetry slam in Baltimore, Maryland.
Zico
Statement of Intent
Zico is a Cairo born and raised hip-hop and spoken word artist. He writes with a sharp, poetic pen from a personal and intimate perspective, hoping his words can create whatever small moments of solace art can offer. His first poetry collection, Reeds: The Ideal Gathering of The Unwell, collects pieces on personal and collective diasporic experiences, calling us in to find comfort and consolation in sharing them with each other. The collection is available September 28th.
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.