Last Wednesday, Authors at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto sponsored an open stage poetry smackdown at which 20 poets under the age of 35 were invited to read their poetry in front of an audience and a jury comprised of Authors at Harbourfront Centre director Geoffrey “Randy Jackson” Taylor and the National Post‘s Mark “Simon Cowell” Medley.

This morning, Harbourfront issued a press release announcing that Nova Scotia-born poet Jacob McArthur Mooney, who now resides in Mississauga, has been named the winner of last week’s verse-off, and receives an invitation to read at the 30th anniversary of the Harbourfront International Festival of Authors, to be held this October. Mooney is the author of the collection The New Layman’s Almanac, published last year by McClelland & Stewart.

But Mooney was not the only poet to benefit from Harbourfront’s largesse: as a result of Wednesday’s reading, five of the other participating poets have been extended invitations to read at IFOA. The other five are: Kyle Buckley, Dani Couture, Jason Guriel, Jennica Harper, and Q&Q‘s own Meaghan Strimas. Says Taylor: “Any one of these six authors could have been the winner on any given night.”