Canto is a literary publisher dedicated to long form poetry
About
A canto is a song. A canto is also a section of a long poem. Long poems used to be songs. Thus the name.
The long poem is a circumambulation. It is walking. It is time devoted. It is time stretched. The long poem is deliberate movement, a patient look to something that might go otherwise unseen. Carbon fragment from sea shell. Corner hue from candle. Rivers almost touching.
Canto was established in Montréal in 2026 by the writer and editor Jeremy Audet.
It seeks to give long form poems by emerging and established writers a home online and eventually in print.
Jeremy Audet’s work has been awarded the Bridge Prize and an Upstart & Crow Micro-Grant in Poetry. His poetry has been shortlisted for the Montreal International Poetry Competition, the Open Season Award for Poetry, the Foster Poetry Prize, and twice for Long Poem Prize.
His work has equally been longlisted for the UK’s National Poetry Competition and the Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest.
He received his M.A. in Literature from the University of Victoria, where he studied and wrote about several long poems, including Linnea Axelsson’s Aednan, Gary Snyder’s Mountains and Rivers Without End, Louis Dudek’s Europe, Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red, Dionne Brand’s No Language is Neutral, William Carlos Williams’ Paterson, Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, Etel Adnan’s Time, and, his personal favourite, Derek Walcott’s Omeros.
In 2026, he is a Writer-in-Residence at the Al & Eurithe Purdy A-Frame Residency, working on his first book-length poem.
He has been the Non-Fiction Editor for yolk since 2022.
Submissions to Canto
are currently open
You may submit twice per calendar year. Please wait until you have received a response for your first submission before submitting a second poem.
Each submission should consist of one poem between five and 25 pages in length in PDF format.
Poems may consist of multiple sections (i.e. cantos), but should be under one unified title.
Submissions should be written mostly in English, though some other languages can be included.
In your submission email, please include a bio of 50 words or less and a brief cover letter telling us the story of your poem. Each submission will receive written feedback.
Email your submission to [canto@canto.ca]
