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In anticipation of National Poetry Month in April, Plume Winnipeg (formerly known as the Winnipeg International Writers Festival) is putting out the call to poets from across the province for its annual Writes of Spring. Writers of all backgrounds, geographies and styles can submit their works for a chance at earning money for their works, publication, and live readings.
This year’s Writes of Spring is extra special as the initiative, which began as a collaboration with the Winnipeg Free Press, is celebrating its tenth anniversary in 2025.
“I started sort of out in the wilderness on my own,” says Plume Winnipeg’s Ariel Gordon, herself an accomplished poet and author. She had been freelancing for the paper for some years, and then had a brainwave about sharing the works of her fellow poets.
“I had one of my midnight ideas where I just wrote my editor and said, ‘Hey, would you like to do a National Poetry Month project where we have poems in the paper?’”, she recalls.
Even though the ways in which poems have been shared through the Writes of Spring over the years has changed, Gordon says the poems themselves have hardly changed at all. “We have always gotten the same mix of newcomers and established poets and everyone in between,” she says. “My main challenge actually is trying to get the call for submissions into as many communities as possible, because we have such diverse communities of people here, but not everyone gets their information from the same places.”
Aspiring poets wishing to submit for Writes of Spring have to follow a few guidelines, including submitting poems that have never been published before and keeping those poems under 25 lines long. Poets also have to be Manitoba residents in order to participate. Twelve poems will ultimately be selected for publication in the Winnipeg Free Press and to be shared at a public reading at McNally Robinson Booksellers.
Gordon’s message to the poet on the fence about submitting for Writes of Spring is one of support and welcome. “You will never find a group of people like the audiences that come for Writes of Spring,” she says. “You will never find a group of people more welcoming and [happy] to hear your poems. We’re just happy to read anyone’s effort and work and thoughts put on paper.”
The submission deadline for Plume Winnipeg’s Writes of Spring is on March 30, with the chosen poems being presented at a live reading event at McNally Robinson Booksellers' Grant Park location at 2 p.m. on April 27. More details on the event and how to submit for Writes of Spring can be found at Plume Winnipeg’s website.