It’s been a wild, teetering year for me and I continue to be overwhelmed by my good fortune. It turns out that judge Hoa Nguyen has selected my poem, “Colloquium: J.T. Henry and Lady Simcoe on Early Ontario Petrocolonialism,” as the winner of The Walrus‘ 2016 Poetry Prize. I am, of course, overjoyed by this news–what a way to get my first publication in a major national magazine I have long read and admired! I’d like to use this space to reiterate my admiration for the other poems on the short list, to congratulate Adèle Barclay for her well-deserved win of the Readers’ Choice award, and to thank judge Hoa Nguyen for selecting “Colloquium” and Walrus Poetry Editor Damian Rogers for passing the poem along. As someone who’s had a lot of luck with contests lately, I remain crucially aware of the contingency involved in such affairs. I’m grateful that people responded favourably to the poem and that it will have the opportunity, in The Walrus, to find many more readers.