Hannah Lee is the 2024 first place winner of the Janice Colbert Poetry Award.
Created by award-winning poet Janice Colbert in 2012, the Janice Colbert Poetry Award honours SCS learners who have created a piece of poetry that moves us.
Janice, who is an SCS Creative Writing Certificate earner, helps us celebrate the journey towards creative discovery through her generous award. This annual honour is valued at $1,000, plus two finalist awards of $500 each.
1ST PLACE/$1,000 AWARD WINNER: Hannah Lee
Hannah Lee is a lawyer who has spent most of her career advising, representing, and advocating for persons with disabilities. She lives with her inter-generational family in the traditional territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples.
Lee says that “Writing poetry isn't sticky like a bad habit. Yet. But that's something I'm currently working towards. Changing. I'm cautiously thrilled to be this year's winner of the Janice Colbert Poetry Prize; for the metaphoric kick in the pants from this bit of encouragement.”
“Hannah Lee’s poetry is at once familiar and new. Her poems play in a space of contradictions, demanding on one line and disarming in the other. Lee's writing beckons us to peer into someone else’s world, and in doing so, recognize our own. - Sheeza Sarfraz, Editor, The Quarantine Review and Janice Colbert Award juror
FINALISTS/$500 AWARD WINNERS: Maude Abouche and Antigone Oreopoulos
Maude Abouche is a queer, neurodivergent, and half-Moroccan writer from Montreal. She draws inspiration from her mixed cultural heritage and identities to explore the liminal and interstitial through speculative fiction. Her story “Blabbermouth” received an honourable mention in the 2023 Penguin Random House Student Award for Fiction, and her short fiction has appeared in Hexagon Magazine, Haven Speculative, and Augur Magazine under her pen name, Madi Haab. She is also communications coordinator for the French-language speculative magazine Brins d’éternité, where she has published book reviews and essays. Find her at lamotdite.com or on Instagram, Bluesky, and Twitter @lamotdite.
“With visceral imagery and pared-back language that packs a punch, Maude Abouche’s suite of poems pulls the contemporary human condition into conversation with the world: a butterfly is “a dry leaf fluttering about my feet” and there are “sizzling server farms guzzling drinking water in Arizona to keep chatbots running.” Striking, spare, and sparky, these poems serve as a reminder that art can be both a mirror and, as famously espoused by Bertolt Brecht, a hammer with which to shape reality." - Leigh Nash, Publisher, Assembly Press and Janice Colbert Award juror
Antigone Oreopoulos is a single mother. Yet when it was time to homeschool her child that is neurodivergent and without speech, she arose. She is a teacher to her son and a physical therapist to him and others with sensory-motor challenges. A labour of love?, No, a service of necessity in our society today. Antigone is a poet advocating on issues such as domestic violence against women, feminism and social justice, and, when lost, finds home again in a garden, on a dance floor, or at the edge of a lakeside dock. In the same way the sun rises in the east and sets in the west so too she has journeyed from her place of birth (Toronto) to her current abode (Alberta), and so too she has powered through labour turning it to favour only to end with grace.
"In these formally inventive and bravely vulnerable poems, we witness moments of innocent teenage crushes and sexual encounters that quickly turn to sex shaming and humiliation. We see the cycle of violence escalate inside a marital home swallowed by a black hole of domestic abuse. By courageously confronting these past traumas and memories, the speaker reclaims her power, finding strength, resilience, healing, and hope. Oreopoulos powerfully casts a spell for survivors 'to rid the pain that has built a home / in their body.'” - Hazel Millar, Publisher, Book*hug Press and Janice Colbert Award juror
For more information about the Janice Colbert Award, please visit our bursaries and awards page.