U of T graduate Michael Prior has won the $4,000 Walrus Poetry Prize and $1,000 Readers Choice Award for his piece entitled Ventriloquism for Dummies.

Award-winning poet Amanda Jernigan and Walrus poetry editor Michael Lista chose Prior out of hundreds of submissions—the Reader’s Choice award was selected by the magazines online audience and is supported by the Hal Jackman Foundation.

“Michael Prior’s poem disproves the old canard that a well-wrought, highly literary poem won’t appeal to popular taste,” Lista said. “Not only did Mr. Prior win over this year’s judge, Amanda Jernigan, one of the most discerning poetic brains in this country, but he also won over Walrus readers. He’s still a grad student and to my mind one of the most exciting emerging voices in Canadian poetry. I suspect we’ll all be hearing much more from Mr. Prior in the months and years to come.”

Prior’s poem will appear in the magazine's December issue and can also be read online. The Vancouver native is a graduate of the University of Toronto's creative writing program. His book of poetry depicting the legacy of his Japanese-Canadian grandparents’ internment during the Second World War will be published in 2016.