Maxine Tynes
Nova Scotia Poetry Award
One prize ($2,000) is awarded every two years for a book of poetry that was written by a full-time resident of Nova Scotia and published or distributed for the first time in Canada in the two years prior to the submission deadline. Additional finalists each receive $250.
The Nova Scotia Poetry Award was established in 2020 through the efforts of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia and poets from across the province, who raised funds to biennially honour the best book of poetry by a Nova Scotia writer.
In 2021, the prize was named for poet Maxine Tynes (1949 – 2011) and received additional support from the Delmore “Buddy” Daye Learning Institute, the Nova Scotia Teachers’ Union, the Province of Nova Scotia’s African Nova Scotian Affairs, and Dalhousie University’s Department of English. The greatest benefactor of the prize was Dr. Afua Cooper, who generously donated the protégé portion of her 2020 Portia White Prize.
Beginning in 2023, the award amount will be raised from $1,000 to $2,000.
Submissions for the Maxine Tynes Nova Scotia Poetry Award are open in even-numbered years.
2025 Shortlist
Past Recipients
2023 Winner
Sylvia D. Hamilton, Tender (Gaspereau Press)
2023 Finalists
Sue Goyette, Monoculture (Gaspereau Press)
Nanci Lee, Hsin (Brick Books)
Meet Maxine Tynes
Maxine Tynes was a celebrated poet, teacher, and lifelong resident of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. A descendant of Black Loyalists, she drew on their rich and enduring heritage in her writing. Her poems explored her Blackness, feminism, and physical disability. Maxine contracted polio as a child, and complications brought on by the disease led to her death in 2011 at the age of 62.
She wrote four books of poetry, all published by Pottersfield Press. Her first, Borrowed Beauty (1987), announced her as a major new talent and received the Milton Acorn People’s Poetry Award, recognizing her as a People’s Poet of Canada. Her later books include Woman Talking Woman (1990) and The Door of My Heart (1993), as well as a collection of poetry for children, Save the World For Me (1991).
Maxine championed the search for Black Nova Scotian identity and community. “We are constantly looking for who we are,” she wrote in Borrowed Beauty. “So many signals have been lost historically and culturally along the way.” She was also known as a beloved English teacher at Cole Harbour High and Auburn Drive High schools, where she worked for a combined 31 years. For excellence in teaching, she received a Canada Medal from the Governor General in 1993.
“I am Maxine Tynes. I am a woman. I am Black. I am a poet. Four basic truths. None chosen. All joyful in my life.”
—from “I Am a Poet” in Save the World for Me (1991)
