The association of poetry with nationalism is ancient and, in the literary establishment, effectively universal. Poets in the distant past sang of their peoples, and poetry has traditionally taken the highest role in national self-expression: there’s a reason most peoples sing verse anthems instead of reading prose paragraphs when they’re celebrating national identity.

But however natural it may seem to categorize poems according to countries, the practice is deeply problematic.

In part, that is because this very universality has assumed a position of exclusivity—so much so that most people wouldn’t think to question the categorization of a poem according to its national origin, whether in ‘English’ or ‘Irish’ or ‘American’ literature courses, let alone in poetry anthologies.

The effective exclusivity of nationalism as a means for dividing up poems, sometimes driven by a pernicious belief that il n’y a pas de hors-l’état, manifests itself in exclusive reading. Readers don’t just limit what they read to that which happens to fall within their national fief because that’s what they’re interested in. They do so because what they read has already been put together—or perhaps it would be better to say divided up—along the lines of exclusive nationalism.

But even this form of exclusive reading is not as simple as it sounds, because nationalism is always already driven by national policy, and what counts as a national poem must first be so nominated in the dominant national discourse. In other words, to pick on my own country, it’s not enough for a poem to be written by a Canadian, in order for it to be a Canadian poem: it must first be judged to be ‘Canadian’ by dominant cultural authorities.

One alternative to national reading is global reading. But for that to happen, the world needs an annual global poetry anthology that reflects the work and interests of people reading and writing poetry around the world.

That’s one of the reasons a group of writers I’m a part of has launched the $50,000 Montreal International Poetry Prize.

In the ancient manner of literary prizes, it has been created in order to encourage people to do literary work and to draw attention to their writing.

But in the very contemporary manner of 21st century organizations, it’s a nonprofit organization based on an innovative social entrepreneurship model and it has a worldwide perspective. We are attempting to build a global community of writers and intend to publish a contemporary global poetry anthology that will bring attention everywhere to poetry from everywhere.

If you want to support this project, or just check it out, please go to http://www.montrealprize.com.

We’re still working hard to get the word out, so if you like what we’re doing, please help us spread the word around the world: our unique project needs your support. You can find a link to our poster here http://montrealprize.com/news/downloads/ and information to forward on here http://montrealprize.com/news/press-releases/ and elsewhere on our site. Thanks!

PS We’ve received some great attention since our launch in late March, and are glad to play an independent role in promoting National Poetry Month, which is celebrated every April in North America. You can read more about us here at the Huffington Post. While many people are clearly interested in the prize amount, we’re also getting a happily surprised response to the idea of promoting global reading. Keep the questions coming!