Recent awards and publications affirm the vitality of this city’s literary scene

For Eli MacLaren, October 8 was just another Thursday, until it wasn’t. “I woke up, I walked my dog, I got a bit of work done.” But “at 10:30,” he reports, “emails just started going completely berserk.” It was that day, of course, that Canadian poet Anne Carson was announced as the 2026 Nobel Laureate in Literature. MacLaren, Department Chair for English at McGill University and specialist in Canadian poetry, thus found himself in high demand for interviews. This spotlight seems to have been accepted reluctantly — “I’m not an Anne Carson scholar,” he admits — but the media came to him nonetheless. “As a professor of Canadian poetry, they want to know what I know.” It has been nearly a month since the Prize’s announcement, when I find myself conducting an interview of my own, and the irony of discussing his media attention is not lost on me. Journalists, myself included, seem keen to contextualize Carson’s win as a national achievement: she is only the nineteenth-ever Canadian Nobel Laureate, and only the second-ever in the category of literature. More important to me than Carson’s citizenship, however, is the Montreal of it all; interviewing MacLaren in McGill’s McCall MacBain Arts Building, I am thinking of all the times she may have walked these halls herself, in her time as a faculty member of the Department of Classics. It is worth noting that Carson eventually left her post at McGill after criticizing the university’s merging of Classics with the Department of History, calling it a “falter[ing]” and a “disappear[ance].” Response on campus to her Nobel win has nevertheless been strong, with many eager to emphasize her connection to McGill. According to The McGill Reporter, university President and Vice Chancellor H. Deep Saini called the news “a source of profound pride for the entire McGill community.” The Reporter itself reinforced this sentiment, beginning their article by introducing Anne Carson as a “former McGill Professor.” Whether Carson would be appreciative or not, there certainly seems to be an impulse to connect her success to our corner of the city. In the glasspanelled display case across from Professor MacLaren’s office, I notice that the Scrivener Creative Review shelf has been given an Anne Carson do-over. The 1997 issue, in which the poet was interviewed, now sits pride of place. As Scrivener co-editors-in-chief Jackson Pinkowski and Chloë Sproule put it in their joint statement to the Daily, “Carson’s win made for a jubilant atmosphere here at [the Review] and at McGill. It almost felt like a holiday. Friends and peers turned their smiling, intelligent faces to one another and asked— ‘Did you hear the good news?’” Pinkowski and Sproule, both masters students in the Department of English, are skeptical of a toopatriotic or school-spirited interpretation of this award, however, calling such an understanding “dubious.” “[W]hat delights us most,” they offer instead, “is the celebration of literature’s élan vital that Carson’s laureateship invites.” The statement as a whole is eloquent and artistic in its stylings, but this is, arguably, to be expected of Scrivener. Established in 1980, the journal has long been a haven for well-written students, and exemplifies the entwined nature of McGill and Montreal’s writing scene as a whole. In 1982, poet and Montreal golden boy Leonard Cohen chose none other than Scrivener as the vessel for four new poems. Cohen studied at McGill, achieving his BA in 1955 before going on to make a name for himself as a poet,singer/songwriter, and novelist. He was not McGill’s first student of English Literature to find success in creative production, either. Fellow Montrealer and poet Louis Dudek also completed his undergraduate studies at McGill in the 1930s, where he published his writings in none other than the Daily. He would later set up a publishing company, magazine, and contribute actively to literary journals, as well as take on a professorship in English at McGill. When I ask MacLaren about the phenomenon of academics twotiming their scholarship with creative outputs, he points out “the places for poetry in our economy,” or rather, the lack thereof. “We don’t as a society buy and value poetry enough,” he tells me. “The truth of the matter is [that] since the Second World War, poetry has been at home in the academy in Canada, and not very much… outside the academy.” As a result, he continues, “many poets, they find their people in universities, and also, they find positions that pay.” Even more than fiction, where a select few authors may find themselves with a zeitgeist-y (see: profitable) bestseller, MacLaren explains that poetry struggles to capture mainstream attention — thus the turn to academia for job security. “It’s too cold, outside of the academy, to try to be a poet. There’s not enough money in it.” Poet Brian Trehearne might know a thing or two about sheltering from this “cold” via academia. Last month, Trehearne saw the publication of his first poetry collection, Paper Black Leaf, with Montreal’s own John Aylen Books. A McGill Professor Emeritus, Trehearne tells me that, on top of his successful academic career, he has been “writing [poetry] from the age of 15.” After earning all three of his degrees at McGill, Trehearne took up a post on the other side of the classroom, joining the Department of English faculty as a professor of Canadian poetry. Despite the stability that this may have offered, Trehearne is candid in our interview about his experience as both a scholar and a writer. “I think some people balance that better than I did,” he says, confessing that “[f]or me, they were in pretty stark contention. They did not go together well.” While Paper Black Leaf is Trehearne’s first book, he “published a few poems in England, many years ago.” Even this smaller-scale publishing took effort and perseverance, he tells me. “You always want something out in the mail. So I would circulate things simultaneously to at least one American journal, two Canadian journals, and one British journal.” This dogged approach still did not equal consistent success, and he admits to having been discouraged. “I think I was too easily deterred by rejection.” Patience is a virtue, however, and Paper Black Leaf is a testament to Trehearne’s considerable, if henceforth underread, body of work. The book features poems from as far back as 1976 — when he was 19, he tells me — all the way up until 2004. Trehearne speaks of assembling the book as a massive personal undertaking, involving “enormous revision of…the archive,” but this endeavour seems to have been worth it. On Tuesday, October 27, Paper Black Leaf was launched at Milton Parc’s own The Word Bookshop, at an event which included readings of select poems by Trehearne himself. The Word’s staff later told me that the event had seen an impressive turnout despite the store’s small space. While Trehearne seemed hesitant to claim himself as part of Montreal’s contemporary literary scene during our interview, he remains a working poet in the city, connected to and participating in the local creative community. At the launch, for example, Trehearne was introduced to the crowd by another Montreal poet, friend and award-winning writer Derek Webster. Trehearne was equally reluctant to overstate a specific geographic influence on his writing, but the poet-professor did speak to writing’s ability to probe questions of identity. “I’ve lived in Montreal for over 50 years but…I was born in BC and grew up in Alberta,” he explains. ‘There are poems in the book that helped me understand some of the ways in which being a westerner in Montreal, or being a Montreal-westerner or something, was kind of definitive.” Also in October, putting the cherry on top of an already poetryfilled month, the McGill-based Montreal International Poetry Prize announced its 2026 winner. New Yorker Daniel Schonning was this year’s recipient for his poem “Tallow”, earning him $20,000 in prize money, publication in the Prize’s upcoming anthology, and of course, much fanfare in the literary community. While the award is administered from our campus, it is international in focus, with previous winners hailing from around the world. In a quote to the Daily about the geographic diversity of previous laureates, director Carmen Faye Mathes asserted that the Prize aims to “bring together poets from around the world,” particularly “at a time when many populations and the governments they elect are actively seeking to close borders.” She also praised “the extremely hard-working Prize Committee here at McGill” for “connect[ing] with poets in places from which we don’t traditionally receive a lot of submissions,” with hopes to “open the door to even more great poetry.” The Prize came up in my conversation with MacLaren, too. According to the professor, celebrating an international slate of poets, rather than sticking to locals only, demonstrates that “writing in Montreal…is on par with any bar of [literary] excellence happening anywhere in the world. We’re equal to that.” He compares this to the “mature literary culture of the nineteenth century, [when] people went to Paris, people went to London.” The Poetry Prize, he elucidates, brings outside engagement to Montreal’s poetry scene, which is “good for literature.” MacLaren has lots to say about the underappreciation of poetry in the rush of contemporary life, but sees academia as a possible answer to this. “I think the most important thing is to do what we’re doing, which is to talk about poetry. Because when people talk about poetry, it restores it to its due importance. And if we don’t talk about it, then it disappears.” On that note, I ask MacLaren to recommend some of his favourite Canadian poems as a starting point for anyone hoping to dip their toe into this restoration. He offers up two answers: “A great early Canadian poem is by Archibald Lampman, called ‘Winter Uplands.’” It’s a very simple poem, and a very Canadian experience.” For the more contemporary-minded, he suggests “Finger Pointing at the Moon” by Don McKay, from the poet’s collection Another Gravity. According to MacLaren, “people don’t know their literary heritage in this country.” For those who go looking, however, a “rich mythology, centred on Montreal and McGill” awaits. This mythology is not only relegated to the past, either. Next time The Word organizes a reading or book launch, or your roommate brings home the newest issue of Scrivener, or the cafe around the corner hosts an open mic, why not check it out? It’s autumn 2026, and Montreal’s literary scene is alive and kicking. Be a part of it! Paper Black Leaf is currently available for purchase at The Word and Paragraphe bookstores. Scrivener Issue 49 will be out December 6.