The $130,000 Griffin Poetry Prize is set to be handed out tonight. Newfoundland-based poet Don McKay, shown in an undated handout photo, will receive this year's $25,000 Lifetime Recognition Award. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Marlene Creates, *MANDATORY CREDIT*
TORONTO – Canada’s most lucrative poetry award is set to be handed out tonight.
The $130,000 Griffin Poetry Prize will be awarded at a ceremony in Toronto featuring readings by the shortlisted poets.
This year’s contenders include only one Canadian – the British Columbia-based poet-translator George McWhirter, who is a finalist for his translation of “Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence,” originally written in Spanish by Homero Aridjis.
Other finalists include “A Crash Course in Molotov Cocktails,” translated by Amelia Glaser of the United States and Yuliya Ilchuk of Ukraine, from the original Ukrainian by Halyna Kruk.
U.S. poet Jorie Graham made the list for “To 2040;” Ann Lauterbach, also from the United States, is a finalist for “Door;” and Ishion Hutchinson of Jamaica was shortlisted for “School of Instructions.”
Runners-up receive $10,000, with 40 per cent going to the original writer and 60 per cent to the translators.
Until recently, the Griffin handed out separate awards for international and Canadian poets, but prize benefactor Scott Griffin announced in 2022 that the award would consolidate the categories – which were worth $65,000 apiece – into one global purse for the best book of poetry published or translated into English.
Last year’s winner was U.S. poet Roger Reeves, for his book “Best Barbarian.”
Meanwhile, Newfoundland-based poet Don McKay will receive this year’s $25,000 Lifetime Recognition Award.
He won the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2007 for “Strike/Slip,” a work jurors at the time praised as “a playful yet resonant microcosm, charted with virtuosity and love.”
He was a finalist for the prize two other times, and has twice won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 5, 2024.
