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Literary Montreal is the source of an audacious new literary prize announced late last week: the which will award $50,000 for a single poem of up to 40 lines written in English.

Billing itself the “World’s Largest Poetry Competition,” the prize is “designed to bring more attention to poetry and to encourage people from all over the world to enter their poems,” according to a press release.

What is innovative about the prize is its encouragement of poems using “any English dialect” and its openness to poets from all over the world, whether previously published or not. [. . .]

An editorial board of distinguished poets includes Montreal’s Stephanie Bolster and Michael Harris, former Montrealer Eric Ormsby, Australian John Kinsella, Jamaican-born Valerie Bloom, Malawian Frank M. Chipasula, as well as the Nigerian Odia Ofeimun, Mumbai poet Anand Thakore, Sinéad Morrissey from Belfast and London-born Fred D’Aguiar, who grew up in Guyana of Guyanese parents.

The early entry deadline for the competition is April 22, with a final deadline of July 8, 2011. The editorial board will choose the top 50 out of the poems submitted, and these will be published in print and in e-formats by Montreal’s Véhicule Press in fall 2011. The winner of the inaugural prize, chosen by 2011 judge Andrew Motion, will be announced in December.

Good luck to all our poetry friends . . . I’m assuming you’ll all apply, since it probably (unfortunately) takes three decades of poetmaking to earn $50K in royalties . . .