J.M. Abraham
Atlantic Poetry Award

One prize ($2,000) is awarded each year for a book of poetry that was written by a full-time resident of Atlantic Canada and published or distributed for the first time in Canada in the year prior to the submission deadline. Additional finalists each receive $250.

The Atlantic Poetry Prize was established in 1998 through the combined efforts of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia, poets, publishers, and post-secondary institutions, who raised funds to annually honour the best book of poetry by an Atlantic Canadian. In 2014, the Award was renamed the J.M. Abraham Poetry Award after the legacy of Father Joseph Murray Abraham.


2025 Shortlist


Past Recipients

2024 Winner

Fawn Parker
Soft Inheritance
(Palimpsest Press)

2024 Finalists

Joe Bishop
Indie Rock
(University of Alberta Press)

Matthew Hollett
Optic Nerve
(Brick Books)

Sadie McCarney
Your Therapist Says It’s Magical Thinking
(ECW Press)

Harry Thurston
Ultramarine
(Gaspereau Press)


Remembering Father Abe

Father Joseph Murray Abraham was a Canadian Jesuit missionary who dedicated his life to giving education and agricultural opportunities to the poorest people of Kuseong, India. Father Abe, as he was affectionately known, died on August 28, 2012 at the age of 87. Tens of thousands of people from all walks of life thronged to his funeral in Kurseong, high in the Himalayan mountains, to show their appreciation for all he did. Memorial services were also held in Calgary, Vancouver, and Toronto.

“He was arguably one of Halifax’s most ingenious sons,” wrote WFNS member Kathleen Martin in a 2012 story in Progress Magazine. “Many of his greatest lessons, he would tell you, came from observing how Atlantic Canadians find innovative solutions with limited resources. How to treat people with kindness. How to share hardships. How to tell a story. How to keep trying. How to ask friends for help.”

Born in North Sydney in 1925, Father Abe attended Saint Mary’s College High School in Halifax and entered the Jesuit order in Guelph, Ontario, in 1941. A Jesuit for 70 years, Father Abe volunteered for the Canadian mission in Darjeeling in 1948. India had just achieved independence when he arrived. His first years in India were spent completing a degree in theology and learning Nepali. During this time, he was also put in charge of a boys’ orphanage that was attached to the parish school. This was his first taste of the problems faced by the poorest of the poor. It was also when he began asking family and friends in Canada to help their Indian brothers and sisters. He mobilized his mother and the ladies’ group at her church to make warm flannel pajamas for all the boys. After graduation, he was assigned to St Joseph’s North Point in Darjeeling, where he taught children of affluent families. He was an outstanding teacher, but his heart was always with the disadvantaged.

In 1959, he was assigned to take over St. Alphonsus High School in Kurseong. Housed in an old hunting lodge, the school building was a ramshackle affair, never intended to hold as many students as it did. In 1960, he returned to Halifax to complete a Masters in Education at St. Mary’s University and then drove his mother’s car across Canada asking Canadian friends to help him build a new school by giving up family dessert one night a week. With pledges from over 1200 families, Father Abe returned to India in 1962 ready to build his school. 

Political events, however, caused massive inflation in the price of building materials. He could no longer afford to buy the cement he needed to build the new school. So he made it–out of the mountain against which the school stood. With every student, teacher, and administrator working two periods a day for ten years, they chipped away the mountain, which workers then turned into concrete blocks, and built the new St. Alphonsus School, completing it in 1972. Their motto was “the best education we can give to the poorest children we can find.” It stands to this day, a high school for more than 1,000 students.

But there was more. He started a poultry farm of 3,600 birds on the school roof, dividing the fowl into small ‘businesses’ of 300 to 400 each. These were managed by children whose tuition was being paid by an increasing family of friends in Canada. The students learned the practical uses of math and science, as well as the value of teamwork. When Fr. Abe left St Alphonsus after more than 20 years, former students joined him to set up another enterprise in 1978: the St. Alphonsus Social and Agricultural Centre (SASAC). There he pioneered programs in bio-gas and Square Meter Vegetable Gardening, a method for organic farming in small spaces. Once the techniques were perfected, his young people went into neighbouring villages to teach poor farmers, who had only small, rocky plots to work, how to dramatically increase the yield of their land, grow crops that brought higher prices, and maintain healthy gardens without chemicals. Fr. Abe also build villages for poor families, and pioneered organic mushroom growing, an ideal small, home-based business for poor women.

A prolific writer and mesmerizing public speaker, Father Abe drew in an army of Canadian friends who supported his projects and with whom he kept in regular correspondence over more than 50 years. Even after retiring, well into his eighties, Father Abe began writing a daily poem, a “Rhymed Reflection,” which he shared via email with his friends. He continued this practice almost until his death.

For further information on J.M. Abraham and his work in India, see the 2006 documentary called Louder Than Words, The Story of SASAC (Saint Alphonsus Social and Agricultural Centre), produced by Priscilla Wyrzykowski. You can also read Father Abe’s “Pacem in Terris” (originally in the Sacred Heart Messenger at Christmas time in 1963), a poem he wrote in response to Pope John XXIII’s encyclical Pacem in Terris, Peace on Earth.

Scroll to Top

Recommended Experience Levels

The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS) recommends that participants in any given workshop have similar levels of creative writing and / or publication experience. This ensures that each participant gets value from the workshop⁠ and is presented with information, strategies, and skills that suit their career stage. The “Recommended experience level” section of each workshop description refers to the following definitions used by WFNS.

  • New writers: those with less than two years’ creative writing experience and/or no short-form publications (e.g., short stories, personal essays, or poems in literary magazines, journals, anthologies, or chapbooks).
  • Emerging writers: those with more than two years’ creative writing experience and/or numerous short-form publications.
  • Early-career authors: those with 1 or 2 book-length publications or the equivalent in book-length and short-form publications.
  • Established authors: those with 3 or 4 book-length publications.
  • Professional authors: those with 5 or more book-length publications.

Please keep in mind that each form of creative writing (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and writing for children and young adults) provides you with a unique set of experiences and skills, so you might consider yourself an ‘established author’ in one form but a ‘new writer’ in another.

For “intensive” and “masterclass” creative writing workshops, which provide more opportunities for peer-to-peer feedback, the recommended experience level should be followed closely.

For all other workshops, the recommended experience level is just that—a recommendation—and we encourage potential participants to follow their own judgment when registering.

If you’re uncertain of your experience level with regard to any particular workshop, please feel free to contact us at communications@writers.ns.ca