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 Atlantic Poetry Award after the legacy of Father Joseph Murray Abraham.
Click covers for more information.
2024 Winner
2024

Winner
Fawn Parker
Soft Inheritance
(Palimpsest Press)

Finalist
Joe Bishop
Indie Rock
(University of Alberta Press)

Finalist
Matthew Hollett
Optic Nerve
(Brick Books)

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

Finalist
Harry Thurston
Ultramarine
(Gaspereau Press)
2023

Winner
Nanci Lee
Hsin
(Brick Books)

Finalist
Luke Hathaway
The Affirmations
(Biblioasis)

Finalist
Annick MacAskill
Shadow Blight
(Gaspereau Press)
2022

Winner
Alyda Faber
Poisonous If Eaten Raw
(Goose Lane Editions)

Finalist
Triny Finlay
Myself a Paperclip
(Goose Lane Editions)

Finalist
Rebecca Salazar
Sulphurtongue
(McClelland & Stewart)
2021

Winner
Afua Cooper
Black Matters
photography by Wilfried Raussert
(Roseway Publishing)

Finalist
David Huebert
Humanimus
(Palimpsest Press)

Finalist
shalan joudry
Waking Ground
(Gaspereau Press)
2020

Winner
Lucas Crawford
Belated Bris of the Brainsick
(Nightwood Editions)

Finalist
Tammy Armstrong
Year of the Metal Rabbit
(Gaspereau Press)

Finalist
Anne Compton
Smallholding
(Fitzhenry & Whiteside)
2019

Winner
Alison Smith
this kind of thinking does no good
(Gaspereau Press)

Finalist
Basma Kavanagh
Ruba’iyat for the Time of Apricots
(Frontenac House)

Finalist
Annick MacAskill
No Meeting Without Body
(Gaspereau Press)
2018

Winner
Julia McCarthy
All the Names Between
(Brick Books)

Finalist
Allan Cooper
Everything We’ve Loved Comes Back to Find Us
(Gaspereau Press)

Finalist
Alison Dyer
I’d Write the Sea Like a Parlour Game
(Killick Press)
2017

Winner
Jennifer Houle
The Back Channels
(Signature Editions)

Finalist
Margo Wheaton
The Unlit Path Behind the House
(McGill-Queen’s University Press)

Finalist
Patrick Woodcock
You can’t bury them all
(ECW Press)
2016

Winner
Sue Goyette
The Brief Reincarnation of a Girl
(Gaspereau Press)

Finalist
Phillip Crymble
Not Even Laughter
(Salmon Poetry)

Finalist
John Wall Barger
The Book of Festus
(Palimpsest Press)
2015

Winner
Susan Paddon
Two Tragedies in 429 Breaths
(Brick Books)

Finalist
Brian Bartlett
Ringing Here & There: A Nature Calendar: Poetry and Nature Writing
(Fitzhenry & Whiteside)

Finalist
Sylvia D. Hamilton
And I Alone Escaped To Tell You
(Gaspereau Press)
2014

Winner
Don Domanski
Bite Down Little Whisper
(Brick Books)

Finalist
Mary Dalton
Hooking
(Signal Editions)

Finalist
Sue Goyette
Ocean
(Gaspereau Press)
2013

Winner
Lesley Choyce
I’m Alive. I Believe in Everything.
(Breton Books)

Finalist
Carole Glasser Langille
Church of the Exquisite Panic: The Ophelia Poems
(Pedlar Press)

Finalist
George Murray
Whiteout
(ECW Press)
2012

Winner
Sue Goyette
outskirts
(Brick Books)

Finalist
Warren Heiti
Hydrologos
(Pedlar Press)

Finalist
Anne Simpson
Is
(McClelland & Stewart)
2011

Winner
John Steffler
Lookout
(McClelland & Stewart)

Finalist
Douglas Burnet Smith
Learning To Count
(Frontenac House)

Finalist
Johanna Skibsrud
I Do Not Think That I Could Love A Human Being
(Gaspereau Press)
2010

Winner
Tonja Gunvaldsen Klaassen
Lean-To
(Gaspereau Press)

Finalist
Anne Compton
Asking Questions Indoors and Out
(Fitzhenry & Whiteside)

Finalist
Zachariah Wells
Track & Trace
(Biblioasis)
2009

Winner
Brent MacLaine
Shades of Green
(Acorn Press)

Finalist
Sue Sinclair
Breaker
(Brick Books)

Finalist
Alan R. Wilson
Sky Atlas
(Fitzhenry & Whiteside)
2008

Winner
Don Domanski
All Our Wonder Unavenged
(Brick Books)

Finalist
George Murray
The Rush to Here
(Nightwood Editions)

Finalist
Anne Simpson
Quick
(McClelland & Stewart)
2007

Winner
Steve McOrmond
Primer on the Hereafter
(Wolsak & Wynn)

Finalist
Mary Dalton
Red Ledger
(Véhicule Press)

Finalist
Peter Sanger
Aiken Drum
(Gaspereau Press)
2006

Winner
Anne Compton
Processional
(Fitzhenry & Whiteside)

Finalist
Robin McGrath
Covenant of Salt
(Creative Book Publishing)

Finalist
Harry Thurston
A Ship Portrait
(Gaspereau Press)
2005

Winner
David Helwig
The Year One
(Gaspereau Press)

Finalist
Sue Goyette
Undone
(Brick Books)

Finalist
John Smith
Fireflies in the Magnolia Grove
(Acorn Press)
2004

Winner
Brian Bartlett
Wanting the Day
(Goose Lane Editions)

Finalist
Jill MacLean
The Brevity of Red
(Signature Editions)

Finalist
Sue Sinclair
Mortal Arguments
(Brick Books)
2003

Winner
Anne Compton
Opening the Island
(Fitzhenry & Whiteside)

Finalist
Brian Bartlett
The Afterlife of Trees
(McGill-Queen’s University Press)

Finalist
Robert Moore
So Rarely in Our Skins
(The Muses’ Company)
2002

Winner
M. Travis Lane
Keeping Afloat
(Guernica Editions)

Finalist
Herménégilde Chiasson
Conversations
(Goose Lane Editions)

Finalist
Patrick Warner
All Manner of Misunderstanding
(Creative Book Publishing)
2001

Winner
Anne Simpson
Light Falls Through You
(McClelland & Stewart)

Finalist
Douglas Burnet Smith
The Killed
(Wolsak & Wynn)

Finalist
John MacKenzie
Sledgehammer and Other Poems
(Polestar/Raincoast)
2000

Winner
Ken Babstock
Mean
(House of Anansi)

Finalist
Herménégilde Chiasson
Climates
(Goose Lane Editions)

Finalist
George Elliott Clarke
Beatrice Chancy
(Polestar)
1999

Winner
John Steffler
That Night We Were Ravenous
(McClelland & Stewart)

Finalist
Don Domanski
Parish of the Physic Moon
(McClelland & Stewart)

Finalist
Robin McGrath
Escaped Domestics
(Creative Book Publishing)
1998

Winner
Carmelita McGrath
To the New World
(Killick Press)

Finalist
Carole Glasser Langille
In Cannon Cave
(Brick Books)

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.