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This New West literary group is looking for the best poetry in Canada

Royal City Literary Arts Society has issued a call for submissions for the seventh annual Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry
poetry, stock photo
The Royal City Literary Arts Society has issued a call for submissions for the seventh annual Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry, which recognizes the best books of poetry published in English in Canada.

The Royal City Literary Arts Society is once again looking for the best poetry in the country.

The society recently announced its call for submissions for the seventh annual Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry. The award recognizes the best English-language books of poetry published in Canada in the previous calendar year.

Prizes of $500, $250 and $100 are available for the top three books.

To qualify, books must be bound as a book (not a chapbook), a minimum of 60 pages in length. Poetry must be written in English by a single author (no co-writes or anthologies); no translations will be considered. The book must have been published in Canada between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2019.

Entries will be judged by Rachel Rose, poet laureate emerita of Vancouver and the author of four collections of poetry – including Marry & Burn, which received a 2016 Pushcart Prize and was a finalist for a Governor General’s Literary Award.

There’s a reading fee of $25. Entries must be postmarked by Oct. 1, 2020. For full details, see www.rclas.com under Awards & Contests.