Arc Poetry Magazine

10/08/2024

We're in spooky season now. The leaves are turning and the air has a chill to it. Today's prompt asks you to consider monsters and misconceptions.

10/07/2024

Tonight is the night! Join us to hear the 2024 Lampman Award finalists read from their books. rob mclennan's World's End is up for the Lampman Award, and here's what the jury had to say about his collection:

The poems in World’s End, accumulate into an expansive reverie of passages that detail
the moments that illuminate. Though divided into eight extended poem-sections, in many
ways mclennan’s World’s End, reads as a continuous ode on the beauty of the everyday,
exalting domesticity and unearthing the profound wonder and awe anchoring our diurnal
existence. In World’s End, we’re reminded that one’s sense of place is “shadowed like a
sentence.”

Make sure to register on Eventbrite here: https://buff.ly/4eeJfez

10/05/2024

We're getting closer to the 2024 Lampman Award finalist readings! Here's another spotlight from on of our finalists. The 2024 jury had to say about Cluster Flux by : D.S. Stymeist:

"Cluster Flux is a complex, expansive collection of poems “pregnant with ceremony” and
united by Stymeist’s contemplative and introspective attention to sound and emotion.
Employing a lush and rhythmic lyric that weaves together the personal and social, there is
a tactile quality to Stymeist’s level of considered description. Cluster Flux is a
smorgasbord of loss, movement, love, growth, and celebration of our being collectively
situated in the ever-evolving now. "

Join us on October 7th at 7 PM to hear the poets from their shortlisted titles! https://buff.ly/47WGzzy

10/04/2024

We're pleased to announce that our 2024–2025 Poet-in-Residence will be T. Liem! We're very excited to get T. Liem started working with mentorships for poets who have not yet published a full-length collection of their work. For more details check out our website here: https://buff.ly/3XQDJYl

T. Liem is the author of Slows: Twice (Coach House 2023), and Obits. (Coach House, 2018), which was shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award, and won the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award as well as the A.M. Klein Prize. Their writing has been published in Voicemail poems, Apogee, Plenitude, The Boston Review, Grain, Maisonneuve, Catapult, The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, and elsewhere. Liem earned a BA from University of Toronto, as well as a BFA and MA from Concordia University. They were born and raised in a small farm town in Alberta, and for the last thirteen years they have been living in Montreal, also known as Tio’Tia:ke, unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territories.

T. Liem’s tenure as Poet-in-Residence will run from November 2024 to July 2025. A feature of new work by T. will appear in Arc Poetry Magazine #109, the Spring 2026 issue, alongside work by poets who participate in mentorships with T. during their residency. Previously unpublished Canadian poets who submit their poems to Arc will be considered for participation in the program. However, all poets are welcome to participate, and interested parties should send queries to [email protected]

10/03/2024

We're very excited to hear from the 2024 Lampman Award finalists at next week's event. To start off our spotlight of the event's readers, take a look at what the jury had to say about V***n by Sandra Ridley:

"V***n is a gorgeous matrix of fierce, suspenseful, and sorrowful poems that appeals to the senses, a hauntingly poignant and expertly-crafted revelation teetering on the edge of “spark and cinder.” Ridley’s experimentation is thoughtful, masterfully layering internal forms to successfully embody the reader as both hunter and hunted. V***n is an intricate, haunting work that remains “after the trembling takes hold.” Like many of the best poetry collections, this is a book that rewards multiple readings."

Unfortunately, Sandra won't be able to join us in person next week but we're still going to celebrate her work and hear her work read aloud!

Join us on October 7th at 7 PM to hear the poets from their shortlisted titles! Make sure to register on Eventbrite: https://buff.ly/4eeJfez

10/01/2024

We're starting the month of October strong with both the Award of Awesomeness and Poetry Prompt Tuesday falling on the same day! Today's poetry prompt and October's Award of Awesomeness prompt come from poet and novelist Jason Heroux!

09/30/2024

Tomorrow night, our friends at the Ottawa International Writers Festival are hosting back-to-back poetry events at Club SAW! The night starts at 6:30pm with the presentation of the John Newlove Poetry Award. This will not be an evening to miss!

6:30pm, Tuesday Oct 1 at Club Saw in Ottawa — "

09/26/2024

The Archibald Lampman Award recognizes an outstanding book of English-language poetry by an author living in the National Capital Region, and Arc is thrilled to announce the finalists for the 2024 Lampman Award: "Cluster Flux" by D.S. Stymeist; "V***n" by Sandra Ridley; and, "World's End" by rob mclennan.

Join us on October 7th at 7 PM to hear the poets from their shortlisted titles! Make sure to register on Eventbrite: https://buff.ly/4eeJfez

The announcement of the 2024 Lampman Award winner will be announced by the Ottawa Book Awards on Tuesday, October 22nd.

Congratulations, poets!

09/25/2024

It's whoopsie Wednesday! Our weekly poetry prompt has to do with forgetfulness. Maybe that's why it wasn't posted yesterday? 🙃

09/19/2024

How's it already Thursday?! Today we're throwing back to the Summer of 2017 with Blair Trewartha's "Breach" from issue 83.

Read the full poem here: https://buff.ly/3Tvgfqv

09/17/2024

For Today's Poetry Prompt we're taking it easy. Sometimes less is more, especially when you're busy!

09/10/2024

For Today's Tuesday Poetry Prompt we're practicing the art of deduction.

09/05/2024

Deadline Extended!!!

We're extending the Diana Brebner Prize until midnight on September 9th. Get your entries in for a chance to win!

09/04/2024

Today is the deadline for the Diana Brebner Prize! Ottawa poets without a published book out, get your poems in to us before midnight!

09/03/2024

And just like that it's September! Today we're combining our Poetry Prompt Tuesday with the announcement for September's Award of Awesomeness Prompt. Find details for submitting your poems on our website here: https://buff.ly/3o0qYMO

08/30/2024

Launching into the long weekend with July's Award of Awesomeness Winner! Kirsteen MacLeod selected Claire Gordon's poem, "Zero Tide" as the winner and Anna Nikovla's "Can You Sweep the Floor" as the honourable mention. You have until tomorrow until midnight to submit to August's prompt, "How to Breathe Under Water."

Read the full poem here: https://buff.ly/3XpZ4sQ

08/29/2024

It's Throwback Thursday! Every Thursday we're posting a poem or review from our archives. This week we're featuring Sadiqa de Meijer's "The Imaging Department" from Issue 89.

Find the full poem here: https://buff.ly/3NxylVO

08/27/2024

It's Poetry Prompt Tuesday! Today we're thinking about the end of summer and the beginning of the school year. What are you scared to leave behind and what are you looking forward to starting?

08/23/2024

What a way to end the week! Today we're bringing you a How Poems Work column by Chantel Lavoie! Chantel writes about Eric Folsom's “December Music” from his collection Lift Bridge: A Garland of Anti-Ghazals.

It is a timely piece as the city of Kingston faces the fallout of the loss of their beloved singing bridge. Since 1917 the LaSalle Causeway has been the main artery connecting the east end of Kingston to the rest of the city. Now the singing has stopped and the city mourns.

Read the full column here: https://buff.ly/3yQpLgJ

08/22/2024

It's Throwback Thursday: Reviews Edition! Today we're bringing you Mark Frutkin's review of Doris Fiszer’s If I Were a River.

Read the full review here: https://buff.ly/3AzUNdn

08/21/2024

Attention Ottawa writers who are unpublished in book form! There's still time to get your submissions in to this year's Diana Brebner Prize. With a $30 entry fee for one or two poems, submitters will also receive a 1-year subscription to Arc.

The deadline is September 4 at midnight EST.

This year's judge is D.A. Lockhart, who will be looking for your submissions in early September. So, don't miss this opportunity and submit today!

08/20/2024

How's your writing going this summer? Here to add to your practice is another Tuesday Poetry Prompt!

08/15/2024

Could you be our next Poet-in-Residence? Today is the last day to send in your applications! Get them in before midnight EST!

08/13/2024

It's time for our Tuesday Poetry Prompt! We're trying out forms this week with a glosa. Use lines from one of our Poem of the Year finalists here: https://buff.ly/4cfyJlm

08/09/2024

Drum roll please!!!

Arc's 2024 Poem of the Year Contest Grand Prize winner is "In Which Alberta Plays the Old West (Not So Much in the Way That Angela Hewitt Plays Bach as in the Way That a Dog Plays Dead) " by Joseph Kidney! Jennifer Baker, Arc's Poetry Editor said: "These carefully crafted images and lines are so tight they consume themselves, peeling back linguistic and symbolic layers of joviality in phrases like “What’s the damage?”: a folk greeting, a warning, a defense, a shrug." You can read the poem here: https://buff.ly/4d8l2WB

We're thrilled to say that the 2024 Poem of the Year Contest Honourable Mention goes to
“Of Eccentric Orbits” by Jennifer Houle. Our Editorial Team said "The gravitational pull of language, elliptical movement of thought, wit and delight in its tones and realities: we could sit under the starry sky of this poem for a long time and not get tired." Give the poem a read and listen here: https://buff.ly/3WXX2Qk

The 2024 Reader's Choice Award is “Dear Mahsa” by Ava Fathi! Our Newsletter Editor Margo LaPierre described Ava's poem as, "a stirring elegy for Jina Mahsa Amini, killed in 2022 in the custody of Iran’s “morality” police. Fathi tumbles language to jewel-like lustre, employing a potent metaphor of pregnancy and quickening to mourn and honour the woman whose protest of the mandatory hijab sparked the movement Woman, Life, Freedom." Give the poem another read here: https://buff.ly/3WXkL2X

Huge congratulations to these poets, and to everyone that made the Poem of the Year Contest Shortlist! You can find all the poems in our Summer 2024 issue here: https://buff.ly/4cfyJlm