These poems are the winners of the Niagara Falls Poetry Project 25th Anniversary Poetry Competition. They will be published with all the other entrants in a print anthology to be published by Phylum Press. To reserve a copy of the anthology please email aporteus@niagarapoetry.ca. A companion volume exploring the poetry over 6 centuries will also soon be available, and may be reserved ahead of time.
Click on the title of each of the winners to see the complete poem.
Each poem was judged by a panel of 3 judges, and the first, second, and third prizes were the poems with the highest average scores. The judges recommended poems for the Spirit of Niagara Falls award, which was chosen by the curator of the Niagara Falls Poetry Project (Andrew Porteus). Many thanks to C.D. Onofrio, Sharon Frayne, and Gabriel Graham Piessens for judging.
An Honourable Mention was given to the highest scoring poem from each of the judges and the curator that did not receive one of the other awards.
What happens to you, being very small when,
for the very first time, you stare down
over stone walls, at that roiling current
be drawn in, wanting to join that cauldron
to cross that old forbidden threshold
to fly beyond day-to-day experience
to regain that biblical acquaintance
To flaunt the imposing of boundaries
and ignoring all regularities
jumping beyond the walls of conventions
unconfined by man-made limitations
It is a place of obvious excess
trying to fulfill our need for freedom
our intense yearning for true connection
with something much more than our selfish selves
A place that threatens the ordinary
with a willful, life-giving compulsion
created long before woeful Eden
and lustful Eve thought of tempting Adam
Cannot the Falls be described as sublime?
something beyond natural and human
Can it be decided by consensus
They have received universal acclaim
Niagara Falls, a natural place
with a very loud, intense, booming voice
witnessing chaos of the primordial
pure form, long before the decline and fall
The boundless realm of nature, now controlled
still exhibiting that untamed power
of otherness, something not of ourselves
including a realm of secret gardens
of minute gardens of long-lost Eden
Is Niagara Falls spiritual?
Does Niagara Falls have a pure soul?
Early visitors made ‘pilgrimages’
pilgrimages lead to divinity
Does Niagara frame eternity
or just the roaring of absurdity?
Terminus of the Underground Railway,
the Church consecrated Niagara
as a hopeful ‘pilgrim sanctuary’
in faith established “Our Lady of Peace”
next to the Carmelite monastery
Sacred pilgrims transformed into tourists
and now soulless gamblers in cassinos
from the sublime to the sentimental
from the holy to the hedonistic
Some see it as a permanent side-show overdone
Clifton Hill, horror museums
or should that be horrible museums
carnival-like bickering attractions
waxen daredevils and tightrope walkers
a great fungus growth of entertainments,
of curiosity-shops, fast-food outlets,
pagodas with shining tin cupolas
Tourism removes danger from the landscape
destroys the sublime and awesome in nature
welcoming despairing souvenir shops
Niagara Falls as entertainment
the once sublime has been commodified
for sale as nature and humanity
transformed to a mass of dancing tourists
The Falls no longer for introspection
it became a place for observation
selfies, with me at photo center
no longer the Falls of Niagara
and the seeking spirits of pilgrim’s past
A place for honeymoons and copulation?
Sex and the wild side of human nature
symbolic of sexual passions and lust
a place of social ritual and desire
Changing a charmed maid to dutiful wife
marriage attempting to preserve order
images, Marilyn against stone walls
Niagara Falls as ‘red light district’
We can talk of industrialization
as a base for electrification
seventy percent waters diverted
gothic temples for power generation
Can you ever really belong here?
Is this where real identity begins?
How do men experience Niagara?
Do women take in the Falls differently?
How do Canadians see Niagara?
What do Americans think about it?
So, are there some final words for The Falls?
in roiling, boiling times like these are now
don’t forget your primal glimpse of The Falls
free from cell phones, selfies, digital world
live again, the romantic geography
witness anew, tireless work of nature
beyond science, tech and that new AI
an entirely subjective experience
Does Niagara Falls express anything?
You can choose, but the answer must be “Yes”
but do not forget, despite what’s recent
one truth is clear; the Falls will outlive us all
that might be all we ever need to know
about the forever falling Niagara Falls
This poem won the Spirit of Niagara Falls award in the Niagara Falls Poetry Project 25th Anniversary Poetry Competition, awarded to the poem that best exemplifies the spirit of Niagara Falls in all of its forms. It will be published with all the other entrants in a print anthology to be published by Phylum Press. To reserve a copy of the anthology please email aporteus@niagarapoetry.ca. A companion volume exploring the poetry over 6 centuries will also soon be available, and may be reserved ahead of time.
Stan (Stanisław) Skrzeszewski was born to a Polish soldier and a Scottish mother who had both directly experienced WWII and who often discussed history, although they usually had opposing interpretations. Thus began Stan’s life-long interest in history and WWII. Stan’s life really began at university where he graduated with a BA in philosophy and literature and with a Master of Library Science. He went on to work in public libraries and then morphed into a management consultant specializing in Internet strategies.
Taking an early retirement Stan returned to university and completed an MA in philosophy. As a philosopher, he organized a long-running series of philosopher cafes – open discussions on varying topics. He also decided to become a writer and focused on poetry and history, before branching out into plays and short stories.
Stan also serves as curator and chief researcher for the Orliński Museum in Mississauga, Ontario. As a historian, Stan focuses on a Polish-Canadian perspective bringing a unique lens to how this history is presented. He also specializes in presenting the stories of Polish veterans who decided to make Canada their home after WWII.
Stan is married to Jantina and has two children. Mary Anne is an artist and horticulturalist. Michael is an outdoorsman and renovator living in British Columbia.
I sit on the patio.
The Budapest Bake Shop welcomes me,
where summer lingers
in old brick walls,
and curious strangers stroll by
with lives I will never know,
while somewhere past the rooftops
the river keeps its one long sentence,
never finished, never still.
And somehow,
in this little café,
you are here.
Not in the chair beside me,
not across the table,
but somewhere between
the sunlight and my coffee,
between a song I remember
and a face the years could not erase—
the way the mist over the falls
is neither water nor air,
but both, and neither, and always.
I first heard of you
before I ever saw you—
a name in an article written by a cruel man,
a girl, an actress, called ugly
before she had even become a woman.
I wanted to know
why the world was so unkind to you.
Then came your long jet black mane,
your hand brushing it back,
and suddenly
the girl they had dismissed
was the most beautiful woman
I had ever seen—
beauty like the falls themselves,
ignored by the ones who live beside it,
undeniable to everyone who travels far to see it.
I was young.
You were impossibly far away.
So I wrote letters
across an ocean,
the way this river carries everything downstream
and asks nothing back.
They never reached you.
Years passed.
The world moved on,
the way water moves on,
the same falls, never the same water twice.
And then, somehow,
you found me.
You once told me
you were nothing.
I wish I could return
to that moment
and place this entire world
before you—
every photograph,
every forgotten film,
every person who now stops
to look at your face
the way they stop here,
at the rail, in the spray,
just to say: I saw it.
Not to tell you
that you were a star.
Only this:
You were seen.
And this summer evening,
on Queen Street,
your image reflects the sun
from my phone,
while Niagara breathes behind me—
that same unbroken roar
that has said the same thing
for ten thousand years,
and somehow still sounds new.
I raise my coffee
to you—
you who disappeared
from the world’s attention
but never disappeared
from mine,
no more than the falls disappear
when the tourists go home
and the lights go dark
and it keeps falling anyway.
Perhaps I spent forty years
trying to keep your memory alive,
only to discover
you were the one
who kept something alive in me—
the way the river doesn’t remember the rain
that first filled it,
and rushes on regardless,
carrying it still.
Source: The author, 2026.
This poem won First Place in the Niagara Falls Poetry Project 25th Anniversary Poetry Competition. It will be published with all the other entrants in a print anthology to be published by Phylum Press. To reserve a copy of the anthology please email aporteus@niagarapoetry.ca. A companion volume exploring the poetry over 6 centuries will also soon be available, and may be reserved ahead of time.
Azaghen Ramasamy is a Mauritian-born Canadian poet and writer based in Ontario. His work explores memory, distance, beauty, and the complicated ways in which people and places remain with us long after time has moved on. His poetry often brings the past into conversation with the present, using landscapes and ordinary moments as doorways into personal memory. A lifelong student of history and human stories, he is particularly drawn to lives that have been misunderstood, overlooked, or forgotten. He writes in both English and French.
I remember hearing it before seeing it.
Feeling in the heart its cosmic hum.
Pulse of blood rushing to the temples.
Heavy rollercoastering roar of current.
Its turquoise, jade body inescapably ceding
to gravity’s ominous pull.
It was that high tide inside oneself. Immensity’s
perpetual aortic leap into the drop of the abyss.
As I look at the erasures of us in those faded
Polaroids & Kodaks, only now I realize that we
too, amidst those endless crowds of tourists,
were no more than drops of water falling.
H2O particles. Spritz from life’s colossal flow.
River of consciousness eternally brimming,
cascading over the escarpment or the universe.
Niagara Falls was our refuge from tedium.
So many times we went down there from sweltering
Sunday afternoons for a change in atmosphere.
How wondrous when visitors came from overseas
yearning to see the Honeymoon Capital of the World!
Gladly we drove them through the highways
to wine country, Clifton Hill & Lundy’s Lane.
We sat and picnicked on the grass
where multitudes had stood before.
They say the sun was out when Annie Edson
survived her barrel trip over God’s water slide.
They say her agents had wolfish eyes.
Just tried to make a buck out of her skill.
But they too are gone now. I saw postcards
of her story and her name’s in all the gift shops.
The world’s sightseers are all here taking photos
& buying souvenirs. Soon they will drive off
to be replaced tomorrow and tomorrow
after that by new faces in search of wonder,
each one repeating, sparkling, falling
on the radiant, arched green of time’s precipice.
Invisible life force calling all of our names.
Oh mighty river, my heart is in your hands!
Source: The author, 2026.
This poem won second place in the Niagara Falls Poetry Project 25th Anniversary Poetry Competition. It will be published with all the other entrants in a print anthology to be published by Phylum Press. To reserve a copy of the anthology please email aporteus@niagarapoetry.ca. A companion volume exploring the poetry over 6 centuries will also soon be available, and may be reserved ahead of time.
Josie Di Sciascio-Andrews has written seven collections of poetry and two non-fiction books. Her work appears in various journals and anthologies among which: Canadian Literature, The Malahat Review, Descant, The Canada Literary Review, Acta Victoriana, Canadian Poetry Review, The Blue Nib and Lothlorien, among others. Her poetry won first prize in the 2023 International Poetry Prize in Rome’s Antonio De Ferraris contest. Her poem “The First Time I Heard Leonard Cohen” was nominated for the 2022 Pushcart Prize. Her latest book of poems, A Nomenclature for Light was released September 2025 by Mosaic Press. One of her poems “Quantum Sparks in the Tabernacle,” was the first place winner of the 2025 Ontario Poetry Society’s Long Poem Prize. Josie is a member of The League of Canadian Poets, the Ontario Poetry Society, the Italian Canadian Writers Association and The Heliconian Club for Women in the Literary Arts. She teaches workshops for Poetry in Voice and is the host & coordinator of The Oakville Literary Cafe series.
The scow after the violent storm that moved it further towards the falls Photo by Andrew Porteus
I remember it was sometime in May
When we all went up to the falls that day
Just me and you and Rebecca and Drew
From Dufferin Islands we walked so far
It was the cheapest place to leave our car
And we strolled along and we passed a barge
On Niagara River, wide and large
The rusted scow had been there forever
And Rebecca who was very clever
Knew the story of the daring rescue
Of the men on the scow when it was new
It broke loose from a tug boat, Becca said
They were saved by man named William Red
The men climbed a cable one at a time
While Red and the coast guard secured the line
And as the river raged on beside us
We walked along with no one to guide us
Went to the casino and played some slots
We won some, I think, but didn’t win lots
To the top of Horseshoe Falls we did go
Where the Maid of the Mist cruised down below
We stood by the falls on that day in May
And got thoroughly misted by the spray
Then stopped at a shop to buy too much fudge
And up Clifton Hill the four of us trudged
We passed a statue on a high tightrope
Then you took my picture with a wax Pope
We saw Frankenstein and Dracula too
Just me and you and Rebecca and Drew
Suddenly Becca collapsed upon the floor
And said “Drew, I can’t take it anymore!”
“I’m exhausted,” she said. “Not feeling well.”
“I’m telling something too early to tell”
“I’m pregnant!” our friend Rebecca did say.
“And so I’m tired from walking all day.”
Back to our cars you and Drew walked and walked
While I sat with Becca and talked and talked
Under a stairway, Rebecca and me.
We spoke about how motherhood would be
(I didn’t know then I was pregnant too)
Then we got in a car with you and Drew
Drove somewhere and ate dinner together
And I’ll remember that day forever
A terrible storm broke apart that scow
And our babies are almost twenty now
Source: The author, 2026.
Jennifer Filipowicz moved to the Niagara area last year with her husband, two teenage children and their dogs. When she’s not working as a background performer on a film set, or manning the front desk at a retirement home, Jennifer can be found hiking the Bruce Trail, swimming at Sunset beach, or reading a book by her backyard pond.
This poem won third place in the Niagara Falls Poetry Project 25th Anniversary Poetry Competition. It will be published with all the other entrants in a print anthology to be published by Phylum Press. To reserve a copy of the anthology please email aporteus@niagarapoetry.ca. A companion volume exploring the poetry over 6 centuries will also soon be available, and may be reserved ahead of time.
