25th Anniversary Poetry Competition Rules & Submission Guidelines

contest rules

 

Welcome to the Niagara Falls Poetry Project 25th Anniversary Poetry Competition, a juried competition with poems in any form, on the theme of Niagara Falls, (the waterfalls and/or the two cities), with a special award for the poem that best exemplifies the “Spirit of Niagara Falls.” Poems will be added to the website, and published in an anthology of Niagara poetry.

There will be a first place prize of $200, a second place prize of $100, and a third place prize of $50. In addition there will be a $200 prize for the the poem that best exemplifies the “Spirit of Niagara Falls.”

Niagara Falls Poetry Contest Rules

Theme:

  • Niagara Falls (waterfalls & 2 cities) & Niagara River
    • Poems can be descriptive, philosophical, spiritual, historical, personal, or anything else as long as there is some connection to Niagara Falls, and not just a casual mention (see the NFPP website at https://niagarapoetry.ca to see the range of poetry accepted).
  • There will be a first prize winner of $200, a second prize winner of $100, and a third prize winner of $50
  • In addition, there will be a $200 prize for the poem that best captures the Spirit of Niagara Falls

Format:

  • No AI generated poems
  • Any poetical form accepted
  • Maximum 100 lines
  • English language or translation – judging will be on the English language translation, not the original language
  • May be previously published or already on the NFPP site
  • $5 entry fee, covers a maximum of 3 poems 
  • No gratuitous sex, violence, racism, or hate speech
  • Judges may not submit a poem to the contest, but will get a free entry on the website & in the anthology, and a free copy of the anthology

How to submit:

  • Submit in both a standard editing format and as a .pdf
  • Include a cover page with name, contact information, title, and biography, with an optional head shot (300 dpi minimum)
  • No identifying information on poem page
  • Optional Include an image illustrating the poem (min 300 dpi, 600 preferred, jpg), your copyright, copyright free, or from a place copyright can easily be obtained.
  • Submit to poetrycontest@niagarapoetry.ca
  • Submit payment through etransfer (preferred) or PayPal to poetrycontest@niagarapoetry.ca with message “Contest entry for [Your Name]”
  • Once submitted the poem cannot be changed
  • Contest closes at 11:59 pm August 15, 2026

By entering the contest you:

  • Agree to have your poem published on the NFPP website & in the 25th anniversary anthology, at the NFPP curator’s discretion (Not all entries will necessarily be published online or in the print anthology)
  • Receive a 15% discount when ordering the print anthology
  • Agree that the judges’ decision is final

 

 

Remarks and a Limerick at the 25th Anniversary Poetry Event by Louise Waldie

remarks
Louise Waldie
portrait by Nancy Wardle, 2023

Remarks at the 25th Anniversary Poetry Event

Good evening.

It’s been about 19 years since I arrived in Andrew’s life.

Over that time I’ve watched while he quietly and without a lot of fanfare, acted on his passion for all things Niagara. A few of the many examples to which I saw him dedicate countless hours and energy:

…. His professional life which included being the Local History guru at the Niagara Falls Public Library where he vastly expanded the online collection of text and images important in the life of Niagara Falls, rescuing a number of collections from local photographers and the Niagara Falls Review.

…. Documenting in photos a year in the life of Niagara Falls, with photos taken every morning from the same spot on the Rainbow Bridge.  Even on those days he wasn’t working first thing in the morning…weekends, Mondays, Tuesdays, holidays…he’d drive from Fort Erie to Niagara Falls around 8:30 in the morning, pay the bridge’s pedestrian toll, stand on the bridge to take a photo even if it was so foggy you couldn’t see the Falls, then go through customs to get back into Canada.  He combined those photos with appropriate poems about the Falls, and 10 years ago published them in a book entitled Niagara Mornings.

….And his most passionate and long-lasting project, searching out, collecting, and recording all the poetry about Niagara Falls or by Niagara area poets on both sides of the border which we are celebrating today. Andrew’s talked about the many aspects of his journey with the Poetry Project, but my view is from behind-the-scenes…the long hours he spent poring over books, chasing copyrights, contacting poets, answering questions from interested readers and so much more.

Thanks you Andrew. for your passion and your dedication to contributing to the common good.

Congratulations on this celebration of 25 years of your enthusiasm and commitment.

Now to finish…

There was a young man from Niagara
Discovered just one rhyme – Viagra
How often, dear sir,
Has this one word occurred
And forced you to post crazy word slaw

Source: Louise Waldie, 2026

Louise Waldie is the retired head of the project management office of a major national insurance company, and wife of Andrew Porteus. She has been active for many years on the executive of the Niagara-on-the-Lake Social Club, and as a volunteer personal shopper for people in Northern Canada who do not have access to retail outlets. In  their multigenerational complex blended family , Louise and Andrew have 5 children and 11 grandchildren with assorted spouses, and a great-grandchild.

Niagara by Charles Sangster

niagara-by-charles-sangster
The Falls of Niagara–From the Canada Side
painted by B. Hess, 1868
Image courtesy of the Library of Congress

God of the mountain-height and rolling flood !
What majesty, and might and grandeur soar
In one unceasing hymn of praise to Thee
From out the turmoil of Niagara’s surge.
Roll on, proud terrorist ! with sweep sublime,
Whose merest touch is as the lusty throes
Of a whole race of Anaks starting from
A trance of passion gathering while it slept.
The massive oak that wrestles with the blasts
For centuries, is but a fragile whisp,
A giant’s toy, in thy relentless grasp ;
And man, whose pride would overawe the world,
Is but a paltry bubble in thy hand,
That passes into nothingness and death.
The crash and wrack of worlds, the sway supreme
Of nation over nation, and the rise
And fall of mighty empires, are as nought
Compared with thee, who’st seen the ages pass,
As in a mirror ; thou the Merlin dread
That beckons them to their eternal rest,
And lulls them into silence with a psalm.
The centuries lie buried at thy feet,
And all their shrouded hosts rise up to pay
The great magician homage.   Thy dread voice
Is as the thunder amid Alpine hills,
And the sun-flash upon thine angry brow
The awful lightning of thy wrath, that like
The fine Damascus blade lets out the life,
Or ere the spirit mounts the Elysian fields.
The children of to-day will have grown old ;
Their children’s children from the ample scroll
And record where the generations trace
Their mortal autographs, shall pass away
And be forgotten ;   but thy trumpet tones,
Wild, deep, sonorous, then as now, shall make
The heart of man a solemn fane of praise.
Æolus’ slaves, the rude compliant winds,
May lash the sea to fury ;   billows roll,
And mountain-wave on mountain-wave be piled ;
When, lo ! the spirit of the storm bows down
Beneath the fetters of the angel, Calm :
But thy tremendous bass confronts the skies
With jubilee of passion evermore,
Unchanged, unchangeable, making thy song
The type of the eternal, without end.

Source: Niagara by Charles Sangster was first published in the British American Magazine (Toronto), 1 (1863):  234–35
Also published in  Charles Sangster, ed. by Frank M. Tierney.  Norland Echoes and Other Strains and Lyrics. Ottawa: Tecumseh Press, 1976

Read about Charles Sangster in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography

Outpost by Arvida Svenske

svenske
Fort Mississauga, Niagara-on-the-Lake, 1890s.
Image courtesy of the Library of Congress

I propose a toast for Missisauga beach
where the lake’s waves make clarion calls! – retreats…
in a rhythm ancient, as the waves and sand
way older than fights o’er the Plains of Abraham
what these waters perform, it is no small feat
but unlike torturous forces have no walls to breach
what can be called victory, what called defeat?

I raise a glass of beverage for Ryerson park
strands of softness and a silent spark
of the world fire cosmos must have set aflame
some sort of constraint for the settling lake
who’s hunger for land-mass liked a tired shark
stopped reaching for its prey, halting its iron heart
To Know Where The Fire Ends And Starts – The Art™

And this one goes out to the troops of Missisauga fort
not for the causes, pawns, the blood, the war, the sport
but for the brothers, fathers, husbands that would be in there
during the Sixty Years, rebellions and the Fenian scare
Fiat lux! and a lighthouse stands tall on the shore
bricks and hands adjust it: now it’s war its for
somewhere in there: a lesson for us all

I direct my speech directly at the womanhood and guards of pride
and the manhood and non-binaryhood of the Onguiaahra tribe
who first came to these shores and seemed to settle down
before borders came along and the jest of crowns
saw these waters, called them holy, then were marred by whites
blood and tar on knives when the Wasi’chu in war took strides
these white jarring sprites left them scarred for life

Guess there is beauty at the Hob Nob and the golf club, too
beauty can be tamed like shrews, be laid subdued
but true beauty comes from the shores and lakes
the light on trees in Chautauqua Park when autumn fades
sages, tools and crazy fools I pray for you
for the beauty that is baffling be made anew
through the eyes of the Maid of the Mist to blaze a new

pathway crossing rivers not like a erasing tool
but as a trade wind coming on emblazed in gold
where the remnants of the vengeance are not in haze but cold
the way that dish is best served as Eugène Sue used to say – and wrote
before these woods burn down, let’s say we tried First Nation-rule
or at least learnt lessons from the days of old
we must restrain ourselves, change our ways, we’re told. We know.

Friends, I propose a toast for Missisauga beach
where the lake’s waves make clarion calls! – retreats…
in a rhythm ancient, as the waves and sand
way older than fights o’er Plains of Abraham
to settle up a town here, it is no small feat
and there’s no enemies here, yet we have walls to breach
what can be called victory, what called defeat?

When the enemy is all greed inside us… already on retreat?

Source:  Arvida Svenske, 2026

Arvida Juni Svenske is a poet, a folk high-school teacher, writer and journalist born in a place called Stockholm, Sweden. She is a history buff, fantasy nerd and a huge fan of hiphop and reggae, who in 2025 just published her first poetry collection in English, Caribbean Wind, Polynesian Storm published by She Rises , in which she explores colonial crimes committed and knowledge lost, especially other views on gender than the two-gender-norm. Oh, and she’s currently writing a follow-up book that details her journey into womanhood, Estrogen speech – and oh, she has a podcast: Cohenpodden.

Reach out to her on:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/arvidasvenskeauthor/

Niagara Falls Nocturne by Len Gasparini

gasparini
Heart-Shaped Jacuzzi in a Suite at the America’s Best Inn on Lundy’s Lane
. Photo by Alina Rashid, July 13, 2005
Image courtesy of Niagara Falls Public Library

The same old souvenirs
still amuse us — pennants,
Indian wood carvings,
and the aphrodisiac cocktails
whose nectar we spill
on pillows like some happy couple.

We spent our sleepless nights
rehearsing melodramas (I remember
your fondness for Chopin)
while the monotonous aquatic
thunder numbed our ears
and the braille of stars felt soft.

In a lofty luxurious suite
overlooking
the picture postcard cataracts
we tickled the skin of dreams
and fevered our love 
with hors d’oeuvres.

At night the neon loins
of this city unveil brides galore.
O Rainbow Bridge,
believe me when I say
our honeymoon was nothing more
than breakfast in bed.

Source:  Len Gasparini. Cutty Sark: Poems. Quarry Press, 1970. This poem also appeared in New American and Canadian Poetry edited by John Gill, 1971

Read Remembering Len Gasparini by George Elliott Clarke

1835 Review of William Coyle’s “Falls of Niagara, as Seen From the Table Rock”

In 1835 William H. Coyle published a chapbook “Falls of Niagara, as Seen From the Table Rock,” which is on the website at https://niagarapoetry.ca/2026/01/26/coyle/

The chapbook incorporates copious footnotes.
 
This poem was not received favourably by all readers. In the Cincinnati Mirror a review was published by “G,” presumably the editor William Davis Gallagher. The tone of this review is set in the first sentence: “Upon what principle this production is called a poem, we have not been able to determine” and grudgingly continues “It is true, that it contains occasional good similes, and is not destitute of poetic imagery; and moreover, has one quality of the sublime—being sometimes eminently obscure.”
I’ve added this review in the pictures below, and also added it to this poem’s page on the website (link above).
 
I invite you to take some time, read the poem and then the review, and decide if G was perhaps a little harsh or right on.
 
review