The Donald E. Waterfall Scholarship Fund

Donald E. Waterfall was my father and my first poetry mentor. When you purchase a subscription to this newsletter, you are paying into a scholarship fund in his name, which will support emerging poets.

My father was the first person in his family to finish high school and went on to graduate from the University of Toronto in 1965. Subsequently, he earned a full scholarship to complete his PhD in Philosophy at Princeton University.

A former diplomat, he retired early to return to academia and became an undergraduate sessional instructor in Philosophy at his alma mater. When his grandchildren were born, he prepared education funds for each of them.

My father had a preternatural ability to read under any circumstance, including my children's interruptions.

Education — and reading poetry, in particular — was really important to my father. We read Robert Louis’ Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verse together. By middle school, my father had already introduced me to both Williams (Blake and Wordsworth) and I had taken a crack at T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland. Later, he made sure I always had the latest Canadian poetry books on hand.

When my father died suddenly in April 2021, I spent a lot of time thinking about how I could honour his memory. The Donald E. Waterfall Scholarship Fund is one way I can do that.

The whole of every paid subscription for this newsletter will go toward the fund, which will provide financial support and mentorship to an emerging poet who possesses an original perspective and a potent mixture of passion, craft, intuition and attention.

I want to amplify your poems, perspective and voice.

Funds will be collected from September 1, 2024 through to September 1, 2025. Online applications for the fund will begin on April 1, 2025 until May 1, 2025 and are available to emerging poets of any age, race, religion, sex, gender or sexual orientation, who have not yet had a full-length poetry book published at the time of submission. Self-published poetry books, chapbooks, and pamphlets are exempt.

The winner will be selected by an independent and diverse panel of 2 judges who may include, but are not limited to, poets, professors and scholars. The Guest Judge and Guest Reader(s) will be appointed in January 2025.

Thank you for reading!