TOM WAYMAN AWARDED

THE 2026 AL AND EURITHE PURDY POETRY PRIZE

TOM WAYMAN AWARDED THE 2026 AL AND EURITHE PURDY POETRY PRIZE

Eurithe Purdy and the Al Purdy A-frame Association (APAFA) are pleased

to announce that Tom Wayman has been awarded the 2026 Al and Eurithe

Purdy Poetry Prize for his collection Out of the Ordinary (Harbour Publishing).

The $10,000 prize recognizes the most outstanding new book of poetry

published in Canada in 2025 by an established poet with five or more

published poetry collections.

Speaking from his home in the West Kootenays, Tom Wayman was thrilled

to learn his book had been selected for the 2026 award. “I’m especially

honoured,” said Wayman, “to be awarded the Al and Eurithe Purdy Poetry

Prize since, in my study where I write each day, a framed photo of Al

glowers down at me-keeping my writing honest, I like to think. Purdy was

helpful to me as a beginning writer in two ways. First, when I was still a

grad student, he named an anthology he edited after the title of a poem

of mine, “Fifteen Winds,” which gave me a huge boost in confidence.

And he included me in his 1971 collection of Canadian poets under 30,

Storm Warning, a kindness that led to my first book being accepted.

Second, the conversational tone of many of Purdy’s poems-a

compositional technique that looks easy to craft, but isn’t-has always

been a model for me: nobody else in the history of English-language

literature beats Purdy at this means to create a poetry anyone can enjoy.”

There are two spots left in the April 25 zoom workshop with Stuart Ross, details below.

THE GREAT POETRY HEIST

Saturday April 25, 2026 at 1 - 3 p.m. ET, via zoom

Stuart Ross offers a fun and productive workshop for poets at all levels of experience. We will explore strategies for mining the works of contemporary poets to create our own poems, employing a range of strategies involving ethical thievery, faux translation, ruthless erasure, unconscious collaboration, and affectionate imitation. Arrive with an open mind and leave with a heap of new poems unlike any you’ve written before.

Stuart Ross is the author of 23 full-length books, most recently the poetry collection The Sky Is a Sky in the Sky, the Trillium Book Award–winning memoir The Book of Grief and Hamburgers, and the short story collection I Am Claude François and You Are a Bathtub. He has received the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Poetry and the ReLit Award for Short Fiction, as well as the Harbourfront Festival Prize for his contributions to Canadian literature. Stuart has led scores of workshops in Canada, Chile, and the U.S., and has taught at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies for a decade. He was writer in residence at Queen’s University and the University of Ottawa and has mentored at the Banff Centre. Stuart lives in Cobourg, Ontario, just down the highway from Ameliasburgh.

To register for the class send an e-transfer for $20 to info@alpurdy.ca
Enrollment is limited.

https://www.alpurdy.ca/donate/

Thank you for your consideration, and your support!