The new prize will be juried alongside the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize for fiction and nonfiction (which up until this point also included poetry) and City of Victoria Children’s Book Prize.

“Victoria is one of the few poetry havens across Canada,” says sponsor DC Reid. “It deserves an award for its many talented poets. When Lynne Van Luven, past president of the Victoria Book Prize Society, approached me, I was happy to fund an annual award.”

DC Reid, who has served as the president for the Federation of BC Writers, Victoria Book Prize Society, and League of Canadian Poets, is the author of  11 collections of poetry and several other books, and has become a major benefactor for Canadian poets.

In 2023, Reid also established a new grant program for poets through the Writers’ Trust of Canada, and in 2024 further endowed the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s DC Reid Poets’ Grant to provide annual grants to Canadian poets in perpetuity.

Submissions for the DC Reid Poetry Prize and the other prizes will be accepted for books published between April 1, 2024 and March 31, 2025 with a submission deadline of May 23, 2025.

The shortlists will be announced in September 2025.