Mark Truscott has won the inaugural Nelson Ball Prize for his poetry collection Branches (Book*hug Press). The $1,000 prize is awarded for outstanding poetry that exhibits an observational quality, in tribute to the minimalist nature poetry of the late Nelson Ball. The prize’s first year covered poetry published in 2018 and 2019.

The winner was announced on Dec. 14 in a Zoom event. The selection was made from a shortlist of five titles by James McDonald, bookseller at The Printed Word in Dundas, Ontario, and Beverley Daurio, a writer and editor based in Toronto. Details of how poetry collections published in 2020 can be submitted will be announced soon, according to a post on the Nelson Ball Prize’s website.