Matthew James Weigel is one of three writers who won the League of Canadian Poets' 2023 awards.

The Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, Pat Lowther Memorial Award and Raymond Souster Award, each with a prize of $2,000, celebrate the best in Canadian poetry.

The prizes were created by the League of Canadian Poets, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting poets and poetry in Canada.

Weigel's debut poetry collection, Whitemud Walking, won the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. This prize is given in the memory of arts administrator Gerald Lampert and recognizes a Canadian writer's first book of poetry.

Whitemud Walking examines the violent dispossession of Indigenous people from the land. Using photography and nonfiction prose alongside poetry, Weigel invokes the treaties as he reconciles his own story with Canada's history of colonialism.

"The book is a masterclass in experimental form that tracks an 'all-or-nothing calling' of witness through the literal deconstruction of colonial archival documents, the uncovering and re-visioning of family stories and the poet's loving and attentive relationship with a particular place. You do not just read this book but experience it with your mind, heart, and spirit," said the jury.

Matthew James Weigel is a Dene and Métis poet and artist based in Edmonton. Whitemud Walking is his debut collection of poetry. His chapbook It Was Treaty / It Was Me won the 2020 Vallum Chapbook Award.

Gillian Sze's Quiet Night Think won the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, which is awarded to a book of poetry written by a Canadian woman.

Composed of personal essays and poems, Sze reflects on her familial and artistic origins in Quiet Night Think. This collection takes its name from a direct translation of an eighth century Chinese poem by Li Bai, the subject of the opening essay. As Sze moves between poetry and prose, mother and writer, she meditates on ideas of emergence and transformation.

"Interweaving lyric, prose poems and personal essays, Sze meditates on language, culture, the act of translation, new motherhood, and her own origins as a poet. But the true power of the book lies not in any one genre or subject, but in the spaces between them – the spaces in which Sze unearths unexpected connections and meaning," the jury said in a statement.

Sze is a poet from Winnipeg who now lives in Montreal. She is the author of multiple poetry collections, including Peeling Rambutan and Panicle, and some picture books, including The Night is Deep and Wide, illustrated by Sue Todd, and My Love for You Is Always, illustrated by Michelle Lee.

Vox Humana by Adebe DeRango-Adem was awarded the Raymond Souster Award, which honours Raymond Souster, an early founder of the League of Canadian Poets. The prize is presented to a book of poetry by a League member.

Vox Humana is a series of literary and autobiographical experiments with word and sound. DeRango-Adem reclaims traditional instruments against white establishment in this poetry collection inspired by the author's multilingual upbringing.

"DeRango-Adem offers a politics and ethics of urgency in every poem. Pulsating with voices, these rhythms are alive as they 'spook / the master's language,' altering formal expectations and invoking lineages of poetic experimentation with distinction and exuberance," said the jury.

DeRango-Adem is a Toronto-based writer. She is the author of three previous full-length poetry books: Ex Nihilo,Terra Incognita and The Unmooring.

Last year's winners were Selina Boan's Undoing Hours, Alisa Kaplan's Qorbanot: Offerings and Roxanna Bennett's The Untranslatable I.