When Spanish Royalty Met Canadian Literary Royalty

^{King Felipe VI of Spain, left, walks with author Margaret Atwood Vic 6T1 near the Victoria University quad in Toronto on May 20, 2026, when Atwood received the Joan Margarit International Poetry Award in recognition of her literary legacy and global influence. (Photos by Neil Gaikwad)}

By Leslie Shepherd

A king flew in from Spain, but the evening belonged to Margaret Atwood. 

Atwood Vic 6T1 returned to Victoria University on May 20 to receive the Joan Margarit International Poetry Award from King Felipe VI in recognition of her extraordinary literary legacy and global influence. 

King Felipe spoke warmly of Canada, where he attended high school in 1984-85, and of the role Atwood’s writing has played in shaping how many Spanish readers understand the country.

“For many Spanish readers, the first encounter with this immense country came through its literature, and in particular through the works—novels, poems, short stories, essays—of Margaret Atwood,” he told an illustrious audience of artists, writers, musicians, business leaders and members of the Canadian and Spanish cultural communities.

Calling her “a soul that mirrors that of a whole country,” the King praised Atwood’s ability to illuminate both the strengths and dangers of modern society.

“With her lucid sense of humour, Margaret Atwood has been a witness to the best and worst of our past and present, not as an invitation to pessimism, but as a call to vigilance as we advance in time.”

In her acceptance speech titled Poetry in Hard Times, Atwood reflected on poetry’s enduring role during periods of upheaval, conflict and uncertainty, while also expressing gratitude for the King’s presence in Canada “at a time when international links and friendships are more and more important to those of us fortunate enough to still live in democracies.”

^{Author Margaret Atwood Vic 6T1 accepts the Joan Margarit International Poetry Award from King Felipe VI of Spain on stage at Victoria University in Toronto on May 20, 2026.}

She noted that she and Margarit, the acclaimed Catalan poet, were near contemporaries who lived through many of the same turbulent decades in different countries, and said she wished she had had the opportunity to meet him.

Atwood has written hundreds of poems and published 18 books of poetry over her writing career, starting with Double Persephone in 1961. Victoria University’s E.J. Pratt Library holds three copies of Double Persephone, including Professor Pratt’s own copy, which Atwood offered to him with a handwritten note on beautifully scalloped paper. In it, she wrote: “I was deeply honoured to receive an award which bears your name, as anyone who has read your poetry would be. I only hope that in future I will be able to write, if not up to it, at least not too far behind it.” 

At the Margarit award ceremony, Atwood widened the lens, turning from early beginnings to poetry’s enduring role. 

“The art of poetry is passed, not from hand to hand, or even from page to page via the written word, but from mouth to ear to mouth,” she said. “It is the voice and mind and heart in action, the crucible of language, the sibling of music.”

Atwood spoke movingly about poets who faced persecution and violence for their work, including Federico García Lorca, Pablo Neruda and Anna Akhmatova, arguing that poetry persists because it is inseparable from human experience itself.

“And here we are, ourselves, in another time of world crises,” she said, reflecting on political instability, war, climate change and technological upheaval. “If we are poets, we will do what poets have always done. We will compose poems, one way or another.”

Atwood described poems as messages cast into the world “in bottles and thrown into the sea,” waiting for the person who most needs them.  

“Any poem is an act of hope on the part of the poet,” she said. “I hope it will go forth into the world, and that it will reach the one who needs it.”

Victoria University President Rhonda McEwen said that Atwood’s influence continues to shape campus life decades after her graduation, and that her “presence is woven into the life of this campus,” from classrooms and libraries to student gathering spaces.

“At Vic U, we often speak about the student lives we shape. But tonight reminds us of something equally important: our students shape us,” she said, recalling a student who once ran back to residence to retrieve a copy of Cat’s Eye after spotting Atwood on campus and told her: “I chose Vic because of you.”

See more photos from the day in our Flickr gallery.