P.K. Page Founders’ Award for Poetry

2016 Winner: Danny Jacobs

The University of Victoria, on behalf of The Malahat Review, is pleased to announce that this year’s recipient of the P. K. Page Founders’ Award for Poetry is Danny Jacobs for his poem, "Fatberg," which appeared in the Malahat's Spring 2015 issue (190). Jacobs' poem was chosen for this award by John Reibetanz.

The P. K. Page Founders’ Award for Poetry recognizes the excellence of The Malahat Review’s contributors by awarding a prize of $1000 to the author of the best poem or sequence of poems to have appeared in the magazine during the previous calendar year. The winner, selected by an outside judge who is recognized for his or her accomplishment as a poet, is announced prior to the publication of The Malahat Review’s Spring issue.

Of Jacobs' poem, John Reibetanz says: "Both lament and celebration, Danny Jacobs’ 'Fatberg' is a superb poem that deeply mines the language as it deeply probes the wasteful underside of our civilized smugness. It carries us through brilliant and dynamically sustained linguistic and metaphorical concatenations whose charged energies are the opposite of the Out of sight, out of mind attitudes it exposes. Even as it moves from 'under London' to 'below the sea' – that destination being both outside and within us – this cornucopia of a poem delights and awakens us to the constantly ramifying glories of the world we have put at risk."

Danny JacobsDanny Jacobs' poems, essays, and reviews have been published in a variety of journals across Canada. His first book, Songs That Remind Us of Factories (Nightwood,2013), was shortlisted for the 2014 Acorn-Plantos Award for People’s Poetry. A chapbook, Loid, came out with Frog Hollow Press in early 2016. Danny won Grand Prize in PRISM International’s 2016 Creative Nonfiction Contest. He lives with his wife in Riverview, N.B., and works as the librarian in the village of Petitcodiac.

John Reibetanz has published eight collections, and his poems have appeared in such magazines as Poetry (Chicago), The Paris Review, The Walrus, and Canadian Literature. He lives in Toronto and teaches English and creative writing at Victoria College. His most recent book is Afloat (Brick Books, 2013), and a new collection, Where We Live (forthcoming from McGill-Queen’s Press in 2016) contains the poem that won The Malahat Review’s P.K. Page Founders’ Award in 2015.

The P. K. Page Founders’ Award for Poetry honours the celebrated Victoria poet’s contribution to Canadian letters. It is made possible by a financial donation to The Malahat Review by P. K. Page in recognition of her long association with the magazine and as a gesture of her deep appreciation of her peers in the local and national literary communities.

For more information about the P. K. Page Founders’ Award for Poetry and how you may support it through a donation, please email The Malahat Review.

Read an interview with Danny Jacobs on his winning poem.

Previous P.K. Page Founders Award for Poetry Winners