The Griffin Poetry Prize is Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

's most generous poetry award. It was founded in 2000 by businessman and philanthropist Scott Griffin

Scott Griffin

Scott Griffin is a Canadian businessman and philanthropist best known for founding the Griffin Poetry Prize, one of the world's most generous poetry awards in 2000. Celebrating its tenth year in 2010, the Griffin Poetry Prize has become known as the most adventurous international literary award...

. The awards go to one Canadian and one international poet

Poetry

Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

 who writes in the English language

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

.

Effective 2010, the annual Griffin Poetry Prize was doubled from CAD$100,000 to CAD$200,000 in recognition of the prize’s tenth anniversary. The increased amount of $100,000 will be awarded as follows: CAD$10,000 to each of the seven shortlisted – four international and three Canadian – for their participation in the shortlist readings. The winners, announced at the Griffin Poetry Prize Awards evening, will be awarded CAD$65,000 each, for a total of CAD$75,000 that includes the CAD$10,000 awarded at the readings the previous evening.

History

In April 2000, Scott Griffin started the Griffin Trust to raise public awareness of the crucial role poetry plays in society's cultural life. Griffin served as its Chairman, with Trustees Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Eleanor Atwood, is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is among the most-honoured authors of fiction in recent history; she is a winner of the Arthur C...

, Robert Hass

Robert Hass

Robert L. Hass is an American poet. He served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997. He was awarded the 2007 National Book Award and the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Time and Materials.-Life:...

, Michael Ondaatje

Michael Ondaatje

Philip Michael Ondaatje , OC, is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian novelist and poet of Burgher origin. He is perhaps best known for his Booker Prize-winning novel, The English Patient, which was adapted into an Academy-Award-winning film.-Life and work:...

, Robin Robertson

Robin Robertson

Robin Robertson is a Scottish poet.-Biography:Robertson was brought up on the north-east coast of Scotland, but has spent most of his professional life in London...

 and David Young

David Young (Canadian playwright)

David Samuel D'Arcy Young is a Canadian playwright, novelist, and screenwriter.Born in Oakville, Ontario, Young studied at the University of Western Ontario...

. In June 2004, Carolyn Forché

Carolyn Forché

Carolyn Forché is an American poet, editor, translator, and human rights advocate.-Life:Forché was born in Detroit, Michigan, on April 28, 1950, to Michael Joseph and Louise Nada Blackford Sidlosky. Forché earned a B.A...

 joined the board of Trustees.

The Trust created the Griffin Poetry Prize with the aim of helping to introduce contemporary collections of poetry to the public's imagination. Originally, the award was two annual prizes of CAD$40,000 each, for collections of poetry published in English during the preceding year. One prize for a living Canadian poet, the other to a living poet from any other country, which could include Canada. Qualified judges are selected annually by the Trustees. The prize shortlists are announced in April (National Poetry Month

National Poetry Month

National Poetry Month is a celebration of poetry first introduced in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets as a way to increase awareness and appreciation of poetry in the United States. It is celebrated every April in the United States and in Canada as well...

) every year. The shortlisted poets gather for an evening of public readings every May/June, and the winners are announced and all of the poets are feted the following evening.

Eligible collections of poetry must have been published between January 1 and December 31 of the prior year. Submission must come from the publishers only.

In November 2010, Scott Griffin announced a new Griffin Trust initiative called Poetry In Voice/Les voix de la poésie, a bilingual recitation contest for high school students across Canada.

Finalists, Judges and Lifetime Recognition Recipients

Winners are listed first and highlighted with bold.

2001

2001 in poetry

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Immediately after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, W. H...

Canada:

• Anne Carson
  Anne Carson
  Anne Carson is a Canadian poet, essayist, translator and professor of Classics. Carson lived in Montreal for several years and taught at McGill University, the University of Michigan, and at Princeton University from 1980-1987....
  
  , Men in the Off Hours
• Robert Bringhurst
  Robert Bringhurst
  Robert Bringhurst is a Canadian poet, typographer and author. He is the author of The Elements of Typographic Style – a reference book of typefaces, glyphs and the visual and geometric arrangement of type...
  
  , Nine Visits to the Mythworld
• Don McKay
  Don McKay
  Don McKay, CM is an award-winning Canadian poet, editor, and educator.Born in Owen Sound, Ontario and raised in Cornwall, McKay was educated at the University of Western Ontario and the University of Wales, where he earned his PhD in 1971...
  
  , Another Gravity

International:

• Nikolai Popov
  Nikolai B. Popov
  Nikolai Boris Popov is a Bulgarian translator.-Life:He graduated from University of Washington, with a Ph.D., in 1994.In 2001, he participated at a conference at University of Iowa International Writing Program....
  
   and Heather McHugh
  Heather McHugh
  -Life:Heather McHugh, a poet, translator, and educator, was born in San Diego, California, to Canadian parents, John Laurence, a marine biologist, and Eileen Francesca . They raised McHugh in Gloucester Point, Virginia. There, her father directed the marine biological laboratory on the York River...
  
  , translation of Glottal Stop: 101 Poems by Paul Celan
  Paul Celan
  Paul Celan was a poet and translator...
  
  
• Chana Bloch
  Chana Bloch
  Chana Bloch is an American poet, translator, and scholar. She is a professor emerita of English at Mills College in Oakland, California.-Life and work:...
  
   and Chana Kronfeld, translation of Open Closed Open by Yehuda Amichai
  Yehuda Amichai
  Yehuda Amichai was an Israeli poet. Amichai is considered by many, both in Israel and internationally, as Israel's greatest modern poet. He was also one of the first to write in colloquial Hebrew....
  
  
• Fanny Howe
  Fanny Howe
  Fanny Howe is an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. She has written many novels in prose collection. Howe was awarded the 2009 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, presented annually by the Poetry Foundation to a living U.S...
  
  , Selected Poems
• Les Murray
  Les Murray (poet)
  Leslie Allan Murray, AO , known as Les Murray, is an Australian poet, anthologist and critic. His career spans over forty years, and he has published nearly 30 volumes of poetry, as well as two verse novels and collections of his prose writings...
  
  , Learning Human

Judges:

• Carolyn Forché
  Carolyn Forché
  Carolyn Forché is an American poet, editor, translator, and human rights advocate.-Life:Forché was born in Detroit, Michigan, on April 28, 1950, to Michael Joseph and Louise Nada Blackford Sidlosky. Forché earned a B.A...
  
  
• Dennis Lee
  Dennis Lee (author)
  Dennis Beynon Lee, OC, MA is a Canadian poet, teacher, editor, and critic born in Toronto, Ontario. He is also a children's writer, well known for his book of children's rhymes, Alligator Pie.-Life:...
  
  
• Paul Muldoon
  Paul Muldoon
  Paul Muldoon is an Irish poet. He has published over thirty collections and won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the T. S. Eliot Prize. He held the post of Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1999 - 2004. At Princeton University he is both the Howard G. B. Clark ’21 Professor in the Humanities and...
  
  

Guest performer at awards ceremony: Gord Downie

2002

2002 in poetry

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* After Ghazi al-Gosaibi, the Saudi Arabian ambassador to Britain, publishes a poem praising a suicide bomber who had killed himself and two Israelis after blowing himself up in a supermarket; the...

Canada:

• Christian Bök
  Christian Bök
  Christian Bök is an experimental Canadian poet. He is the author of Eunoia, which won the Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize, and which has been said to be "Canada's best-selling poetry book ever."-Life:...
  
  , Eunoia
  Eunoia (book)
  Eunoia is the title of a set of univocalics by Canadian poet Christian Bök, which consists of chapters written using words limited to a single vowel...
  
  
• Erin Mouré
  Erin Mouré
  Erin Mouré is a Canadian poet and translator of poetry from languages which include, French, Galician, Portuguese and Spanish to English. Her mother Mary Irene was born 1924 in Galicia, Poland and moved to Canada in 1929. Erin’s father is William Moure born in Ottawa Canada in 1925...
  
  , Sheep's Vigil by a Fervent Person
• Karen Solie
  Karen Solie
  Karen Solie is a Canadian poet.Born in Moose Jaw, Solie grew up on the family farm in southwest Saskatchewan. Over the years, she has worked as a farm hand, an espresso jerk, a groundskeeper, a newspaper reporter/photographer, an academic research assistant, and an English teacher...
  
  , Short Haul Engine

International:

• Alice Notley
  Alice Notley
  Alice Notley is an American poet. She was born in Bisbee, Arizona and grew up in Needles, California. She received a B.A. from Barnard College in 1967 and an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1969. She married poet Ted Berrigan in 1972, with whom she was active in...
  
  , Disobedience
• Victor Hernández Cruz
  Victor Hernández Cruz
  Victor Hernández Cruz is a Puerto Rican poet.-Life:He moved to New York in 1954. He began writing at fifteen, and published his first collections of poetry in the late 1960s....
  
  , Maraca
• Christopher Logue
  Christopher Logue
  Christopher Logue, CBE is an English poet associated with the British Poetry Revival. He has also written for the theatre and cinema as well as acting in a number of films. His two screenplays are Savage Messiah and The End of Arthur's Marriage...
  
  , Homer: War Music
• Les Murray
  Les Murray (poet)
  Leslie Allan Murray, AO , known as Les Murray, is an Australian poet, anthologist and critic. His career spans over forty years, and he has published nearly 30 volumes of poetry, as well as two verse novels and collections of his prose writings...
  
  , Conscious and Verbal

Judges:

• Dionne Brand
  Dionne Brand
  Dionne Brand is a Canadian poet, novelist, essayist and documentarian. She was named Toronto's third Poet Laureate in September 2009.-Biography:...
  
  
• Robert Creeley
  Robert Creeley
  Robert Creeley was an American poet and author of more than sixty books. He is usually associated with the Black Mountain poets, though his verse aesthetic diverged from that school's. He was close with Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, John Wieners and Ed Dorn. He served as the Samuel P...
  
  
• Michael Hofmann
  Michael Hofmann
  Michael Hofmann is a German-born poet who writes in English and a translator of texts from German.-Biography:...
  
  

Guest host at awards ceremony: Albert Schultz

Albert Schultz

Albert Schultz is a Canadian actor, director and the founding artistic director of Toronto's celebrated Soulpepper Theatre Company.-Education:...

2003

2003 in poetry

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* The Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry was opened at Queens University, Belfast, this year. It houses the Heaney Media Archive, a unique record of Heaney's entire oeuvre, as well as a full catalogue of...

Canada:

• Margaret Avison
  Margaret Avison
  Margaret Avison, OC was a Canadian poet who twice won Canada's Governor General's Award and has also won its Griffin Poetry Prize. "Her work has often been praised for the beauty of its language and images."-Life:...
  
  , Concrete and Wild Carrot
• Dionne Brand
  Dionne Brand
  Dionne Brand is a Canadian poet, novelist, essayist and documentarian. She was named Toronto's third Poet Laureate in September 2009.-Biography:...
  
  , thirsty
• P.K. Page, Planet Earth: Poems Selected and New

International:

• Paul Muldoon
  Paul Muldoon
  Paul Muldoon is an Irish poet. He has published over thirty collections and won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the T. S. Eliot Prize. He held the post of Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1999 - 2004. At Princeton University he is both the Howard G. B. Clark ’21 Professor in the Humanities and...
  
  , Moy sand and gravel
• Kathleen Jamie
  Kathleen Jamie
  Kathleen Jamie FRSL is a Scottish poet, raised in Currie, Edinburgh. She gained an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh....
  
  , Mr And Mrs Scotland are Dead: Poems 1980-1994
• Gerald Stern
  Gerald Stern
  Gerald Stern is an American poet. His work became widely recognized after the 1977 publication of Lucky Life, which was that year's Lamont Poetry Selection, and of a series of essays on writing poetry in American Poetry Review. He has subsequently been given many prestigious awards for his...
  
  , American Sonnets: poems
• C. D. Wright
  C. D. Wright
  Carolyn D. "C. D." Wright is an American poet.-Biography:Wright was born in Mountain Home, Arkansas to a chancery judge and a court reporter. She earned a BA from Memphis State College in 1971 and briefly attended law school before leaving to pursue an MFA from the University of Arkansas, which...
  
  , Steal Away: selected and new poems

Judges:

• Michael Longley
  Michael Longley
  Michael Longley, CBE is a Northern Irish poet from Belfast.-Life and career:Longley was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution and subsequently read Classics at Trinity College, Dublin, where he edited Icarus...
  
  
• Sharon Olds
  Sharon Olds
  -Life:Sharon Olds was born in 1942 in San Francisco. She was raised as a “hellfire Calvinist”, as she describes it. She says she was by nature "a pagan and a pantheist" and notes "I was in a church where there was both great literary art and bad literary art, the great art being psalms and the bad...
  
  
• Sharon Thesen
  Sharon Thesen
  Sharon Thesen is a Canadian poet who lives in Lake Country, British Columbia. She teaches at UBC-O.In 2003, Thesen was a judge for the Griffin Poetry Prize.-Bibliography:*Artemis Hates Romance - 1980...
  
  

Guest speaker at awards ceremony: Heather McHugh

Heather McHugh

-Life:Heather McHugh, a poet, translator, and educator, was born in San Diego, California, to Canadian parents, John Laurence, a marine biologist, and Eileen Francesca . They raised McHugh in Gloucester Point, Virginia. There, her father directed the marine biological laboratory on the York River...

2004

2004 in poetry

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* April 1 — Foetry.com Web site is launched for the announced purpose of "Exposing fraudulent contests. Tracking the sycophants...

Canada:

• Anne Simpson
  Anne Simpson
  -Career:Simpson received her B.A. and M.A. degrees from Queen’s University, and she also graduated in Fine Arts from OCAD University . Subsequently, she worked as a CUSO volunteer English teacher for two years in Nigeria. She teaches part-time at St...
  
  , Loop
• Di Brandt
  Di Brandt
  Di Brandt is an award-winning Canadian poet and literary critic. Despite the similarity of their names, she should not be confused with poet Dionne Brand.-Biography:...
  
  , Now You Care
• Leslie Greentree
  Leslie Greentree
  Leslie Greentree is a Canadian poet.Born in Grande Prairie, Alberta, she was educated at the University of Lethbridge, from which she received Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Education degrees....
  
  , Go-go Dancing for Elvis

International:

• August Kleinzahler
  August Kleinzahler
  -Life and career:Until he was 11, he went to school in Fort Lee, New Jersey, where he grew up. He then commuted to the Horace Mann School in the Bronx, graduating in 1967. He wrote poetry from this time, inspired by Keats and Kenneth Rexroth translations, among other works...
  
  , The Strange Hours Travelers Keep
• Suji Kwock Kim
  Suji Kwock Kim
  -Life:She graduated from Yale College; the Iowa Writers' Workshop; Seoul National University, where she was a Fulbright Scholar; and Stanford University, where she was a Stegner Fellow....
  
  , Notes From the Divided Country
• David Kirby
  David Kirby (poet)
  David Kirby is an American poet and the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English at Florida State University . His most recent book is The Temple Gate Called Beautiful, published in 2008 by Alice James Books...
  
  , The Ha-Ha
• Louis Simpson
  Louis Simpson
  Louis Aston Marantz Simpson is an American poet. He won the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his work At The End Of The Open Road.-Life:...
  
  , The Owner of the House

Judges:

• Billy Collins
  Billy Collins
  Billy Collins is an American poet, appointed as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. He is a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York and is the Senior Distinguished Fellow of the Winter Park Institute, Florida...
  
  
• Bill Manhire
  Bill Manhire
  William "Bill" Manhire, CNZM is an award-winning New Zealand poet, short story writer, and professor, New Zealand's inaugural Poet Laureate.-Biography:...
  
  
• Phyllis Webb
  Phyllis Webb
  Phyllis Webb, is a Canadian poet and radio broadcaster. The Canadian Encyclopedia describes her as "a writer of stature in Canadian letters", and calls her work "brilliantly crafted, formal in its energies and humane in its concern"....
  
  

2005

2005 in poetry

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* October 7 — Celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the first reading of Allen Ginsberg's poem Howl were staged in San Francisco, New York City, and in Leeds in the UK...

Canada:

• Roo Borson
  Roo Borson
  Ruth Elizabeth Borson, who writes under the name Roo Borson is a Canadian poet who lives in Toronto. She is a graduate of the University of British Columbia....
  
  , Short Journey Upriver Toward Oishida
• George Bowering
  George Bowering
  George Harry Bowering, OC, OBC is a prolific Canadian novelist, poet, historian, and biographer. He has served as Canada's Parliamentary Poet Laureate....
  
  , Changing on the Fly
• Don McKay
  Don McKay
  Don McKay, CM is an award-winning Canadian poet, editor, and educator.Born in Owen Sound, Ontario and raised in Cornwall, McKay was educated at the University of Western Ontario and the University of Wales, where he earned his PhD in 1971...
  
  , Camber

International:

• Charles Simic
  Charles Simic
  Dušan "Charles" Simić is a Serbian-American poet, and was co-Poetry Editor of the Paris Review. He was appointed the fifteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 2007.-Early years:...
  
  , Selected Poems: 1963-2003
• Fanny Howe
  Fanny Howe
  Fanny Howe is an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. She has written many novels in prose collection. Howe was awarded the 2009 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, presented annually by the Poetry Foundation to a living U.S...
  
  , On the Ground
• Michael Symmons Roberts
  Michael Symmons Roberts
  Michael Symmons Roberts is a British poet. He has published five collections of poetry, all with Cape , and has won the Whitbread Poetry Award, as well as major prizes from the Arts Council and Society of Authors. He has been shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize twice, the Griffin International...
  
  , Corpus
• Matthew Rohrer
  Matthew Rohrer
  Matthew Rohrer is an American poet.Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Rohrer was raised in Oklahoma. He earned a B.A. from the University of Michigan and a Master of Fine Arts degree in poetry from the University of Iowa.His first book of poetry, A Hummock in the Malookas , was selected by Mary Oliver...
  
  , A Green Light

Judges:

• Simon Armitage
  Simon Armitage
  Simon Armitage CBE is a British poet, playwright, and novelist.-Life and career:Simon Armitage was born in Marsden, West Yorkshire. Armitage first studied at Colne Valley High School, Linthwaite, Huddersfield and went on to study geography at Portsmouth Polytechnic...
  
  
• Erin Mouré
  Erin Mouré
  Erin Mouré is a Canadian poet and translator of poetry from languages which include, French, Galician, Portuguese and Spanish to English. Her mother Mary Irene was born 1924 in Galicia, Poland and moved to Canada in 1929. Erin’s father is William Moure born in Ottawa Canada in 1925...
  
  
• Tomaž Šalamun
  Tomaz Salamun
  Tomaž Šalamun is a Slovenian poet. He was born in 1941 in Zagreb, Croatia, and raised in Koper, Slovenia. He has published 39 collections of poetry in his native Slovenian language. Šalamun spent two years at the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop in the 1970s and has lived for periods of time in...
  
  

Guest speaker at awards ceremony: August Kleinzahler

August Kleinzahler

-Life and career:Until he was 11, he went to school in Fort Lee, New Jersey, where he grew up. He then commuted to the Horace Mann School in the Bronx, graduating in 1967. He wrote poetry from this time, inspired by Keats and Kenneth Rexroth translations, among other works...

2006

2006 in poetry

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* French public notary Patrick Huet unveils Pieces of Hope to the Echo of the World in Lyon...

Canada:

• Sylvia Legris
  Sylvia Legris
  Sylvia Legris is a Canadian poet.Originally from Winnipeg, Manitoba, she now lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. She has published three volumes of poetry, the third of which, Nerve Squall, won the 2006 Griffin Poetry Prize and Pat Lowther Award....
  
  , Nerve Squall
• Phil Hall
  Phil Hall (poet)
  Phil Hall is a Canadian poet. He was raised on farms in the Kawarthas region of Ontario. His most recent book of poems is An Oak Hunch.-Education:Hall holds an M.A. in creative writing from the University of Windsor.-Career:...
  
  , An Oak Hunch
• Erin Mouré
  Erin Mouré
  Erin Mouré is a Canadian poet and translator of poetry from languages which include, French, Galician, Portuguese and Spanish to English. Her mother Mary Irene was born 1924 in Galicia, Poland and moved to Canada in 1929. Erin’s father is William Moure born in Ottawa Canada in 1925...
  
  , Little theatres

International:

• Kamau Brathwaite, Born to Slow Horses
• Michael Hofmann
  Michael Hofmann
  Michael Hofmann is a German-born poet who writes in English and a translator of texts from German.-Biography:...
  
  , translation of Ashes for Breakfast: Selected Poems by Durs Grünbein
  Durs Grünbein
  Durs Grünbein is a German poet, living in Berlin since 1985.Grünbein is hailed as the most significant and successful poet to emerge from the former East Germany, and his work has been awarded many major German literary prizes, including the highest, the Georg-Büchner-Preis, which he won in 1995...
  
  
• Michael Palmer
  Michael Palmer
  Michael Palmer is an American poet and translator. He attended Harvard University where he earned a BA in French and a MA in Comparative Literature. He has worked extensively with Contemporary dance for over thirty years and has collaborated with many composers and visual artists...
  
  , Company of Moths
• Elizabeth Winslow, translation of The War Works Hard by Dunya Mikhail
  Dunya Mikhail
  Dunya Mikhail is an ethnic Chaldean United States-based poet who was born in Iraq. Mikhail worked as Literary Editor for The Baghdad Observer. Facing increasing threats and harassment from the Iraqi authorities for her writings, she fled Iraq in the late 1990s and studied Near Eastern Studies at...
  
  

Judges:

• Lavinia Greenlaw
  Lavinia Greenlaw
  -Biography:Greenlaw was born in London into a family of doctors and scientists, but spent much of her childhood in a small village in Essex. She began her working life in publishing and arts administration before embarking upon a career as a freelance artist, critic and radio broadcaster. She lives...
  
  
• Lisa Robertson
  Lisa Robertson (poet)
  Lisa Robertson is a Canadian poet who is best known for a collection a poem entitled The Weather, which was inspired by the shipping forecasts announced on BBC radio. She currently lives in France.-Life:...
  
  
• Eliot Weinberger
  Eliot Weinberger
  Eliot Weinberger is a contemporary American writer, essayist, editor, and translator. His work regularly appears in translation and has been published in some thirty languages...
  
  

Lifetime Recognition Award (presented by the Griffin trustees) to Robin Blaser

Robin Blaser

Robin Francis Blaser was an author and poet in both the United States and Canada.-Personal background:Born in Denver, Colorado, Blaser grew up in Idaho, and came to Berkeley, California, in 1944. There he met Jack Spicer and Robert Duncan, becoming a key figure in the San Francisco Renaissance of...

Guest speaker at awards ceremony: Simon Armitage

Simon Armitage

Simon Armitage CBE is a British poet, playwright, and novelist.-Life and career:Simon Armitage was born in Marsden, West Yorkshire. Armitage first studied at Colne Valley High School, Linthwaite, Huddersfield and went on to study geography at Portsmouth Polytechnic...

2007

2007 in poetry

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* March 5: a car bomb was exploded on Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad. More than 30 people were killed and more than 100 were wounded. This locale is the historic center of Baghdad bookselling, a winding...

Canada:

• Don McKay
  Don McKay
  Don McKay, CM is an award-winning Canadian poet, editor, and educator.Born in Owen Sound, Ontario and raised in Cornwall, McKay was educated at the University of Western Ontario and the University of Wales, where he earned his PhD in 1971...
  
  , Strike/Slip
• Ken Babstock
  Ken Babstock
  Ken Babstock is a Canadian poet. He was born in Newfoundland and raised in the Ottawa Valley. Babstock began publishing his poems in journals and anthologies, winning gold at the 1997 Canadian National Magazine Awards...
  
  , Airstream Land Yacht
• Priscila Uppal
  Priscilla Uppal
  Priscila Uppal is a Canadian poet and novelist. She graduated from Hillcrest High School in 1993. She teaches literature and creative writing at York University in Toronto...
  
  , Ontological Necessities

International:

• Charles Wright
  Charles Wright (poet)
  Charles Wright is an American poet whose awards include the National Book Award Charles Wright (born August 25, 1935) is an American poet whose awards include the National Book Award Charles Wright (born August 25, 1935) is an American poet whose awards include the National Book Award (19830 for...
  
  , Scar Tissue
• Paul Farley
  Paul Farley
  Paul Farley is an award-winning English poet. He studied painting at the Chelsea School of Art, and has lived in London, Brighton and Cumbria...
  
  , Tramp in Flames
• Rodney Jones
  Rodney Jones
  Rodney Jones is an American poet and professor of English at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Jones was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the winner of the 1989 National Book Critics Circle Award. His other honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Peter I.B...
  
  , Salvation Blues
• Frederick Seidel
  Frederick Seidel
  -Career:In 1962, his first book, Final Solutions, was chosen by a jury of Louise Bogan, Stanley Kunitz, and Robert Lowell for an award sponsored by the 92nd Street Y, with a $1,500 prize...
  
  , Ooga-Booga

Judges:

• John Burnside
  John Burnside
  John Burnside is a Scottish writer, born in Dunfermline.-Background:Burnside studied English and European Languages at Cambridge College of Arts and Technology. A former computer software engineer, he has been a freelance writer since 1996...
  
  
• Charles Simic
  Charles Simic
  Dušan "Charles" Simić is a Serbian-American poet, and was co-Poetry Editor of the Paris Review. He was appointed the fifteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 2007.-Early years:...
  
  
• Karen Solie
  Karen Solie
  Karen Solie is a Canadian poet.Born in Moose Jaw, Solie grew up on the family farm in southwest Saskatchewan. Over the years, she has worked as a farm hand, an espresso jerk, a groundskeeper, a newspaper reporter/photographer, an academic research assistant, and an English teacher...
  
  

Lifetime Recognition Award (presented by the Griffin trustees) to Tomas Tranströmer

Tomas Tranströmer

Tomas Gösta Tranströmer is a Swedish writer, poet and translator, whose poetry has been translated into over 60 languages. Tranströmer is acclaimed as one of the most important Scandinavian writers since the Second World War...

Guest speaker at awards ceremony: Matthew Rohrer

Matthew Rohrer

Matthew Rohrer is an American poet.Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Rohrer was raised in Oklahoma. He earned a B.A. from the University of Michigan and a Master of Fine Arts degree in poetry from the University of Iowa.His first book of poetry, A Hummock in the Malookas , was selected by Mary Oliver...

2008

2008 in poetry

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* June — the release in the United Kingdom of a new film, The Edge of Love, Dylan Thomas' relationship with two women, starring Keira Knightley, Sienna Miller, Cillian Murphy and Matthew Rhys *...

Canada:

• Robin Blaser
  Robin Blaser
  Robin Francis Blaser was an author and poet in both the United States and Canada.-Personal background:Born in Denver, Colorado, Blaser grew up in Idaho, and came to Berkeley, California, in 1944. There he met Jack Spicer and Robert Duncan, becoming a key figure in the San Francisco Renaissance of...
  
  , The Holy Forest: Collected Poems of Robin Blaser
• Robert Majzels
  Robert Majzels
  Robert Majzels is a Canadian novelist, poet, playwright and translator.- Life :Majzels was born in Montreal. In 1986, he graduated with a Master's degree in English Literature from Concordia University in Montreal, where he would later teach creative writing for thirteen years. Between 2000 and...
  
   and Erin Moure
  Erin Mouré
  Erin Mouré is a Canadian poet and translator of poetry from languages which include, French, Galician, Portuguese and Spanish to English. Her mother Mary Irene was born 1924 in Galicia, Poland and moved to Canada in 1929. Erin’s father is William Moure born in Ottawa Canada in 1925...
  
  , translation of Notebook of Roses and Civilization by Nicole Brossard
  Nicole Brossard
  Nicole Brossard, O.C. is a leading French Canadian formalist poet and novelist.She lives in Outremont, a former city in Montreal, Quebec. She wrote her first collection in 1965, Aube à la maison. The collection L'Echo bouge beau marks a break in the evolution of her poetry...
  
  
• David McFadden
  David McFadden
  David William McFadden is a Canadian poet, fiction writer, and travel writer. He was born in Hamilton, Ontario and first started working there as a proofreader for the Hamilton Spectator newspaper. As he grew more renowned as a poet he quit the newspaper and became a full-time writer in 1976...
  
  , Why Are You So Sad? Selected Poems of David W. McFadden

International:

• John Ashbery
  John Ashbery
  John Lawrence Ashbery is an American poet. He has published more than twenty volumes of poetry and won nearly every major American award for poetry, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. But Ashbery's work still proves controversial...
  
  , Notes from the Air: Selected Later Poems
• Elaine Equi
  Elaine Equi
  Elaine Equi is an American poet.Equi was born in Oak Park, Illinois and grew up in the Chicago area. Since 1988 she has lived in New York with her husband, poet Jerome Sala. She currently teaches creative writing in the Master of Fine Arts programs at City College of New York and The New School...
  
  , Ripple Effect: New and Selected Poems
• Clayton Eshleman
  Clayton Eshleman
  Clayton Eshleman is an American poet, translator, and editor.-Life:Eshleman has been translating since the early 1960s. He is the recipient of the National Book Award in 1979 for his co-translation of César Vallejo's Complete Posthumous Poetry...
  
  , translation of The Complete Poetry: A Bilingual Edition by Cesar Vallejo
  César Vallejo
  César Abraham Vallejo Mendoza was a Peruvian poet. Although he published only three books of poetry during his lifetime, he is considered one of the great poetic innovators of the 20th century in any language. Thomas Merton called him "the greatest universal poet since Dante"...
  
  
• David Harsent
  David Harsent
  David Harsent is an English poet & TV scriptwriter. As Jack Curtis and David Lawrence he has published a number of crime fiction novels....
  
  , Selected Poems 1969-2005

Judges:

• George Bowering
  George Bowering
  George Harry Bowering, OC, OBC is a prolific Canadian novelist, poet, historian, and biographer. He has served as Canada's Parliamentary Poet Laureate....
  
  
• James Lasdun
  James Lasdun
  James Lasdun is an English author, poet and academic. Lasdun was one of the judges for the 2008 Griffin Poetry Prize.-Career:...
  
  
• Pura Lopez Colome

Lifetime Recognition Award (presented by the Griffin trustees) to Ko Un

Ko Un

Ko Un is a South Korean poet. His works have been translated and published in more than 15 countries and he has been imprisoned many times...

Guest speaker at awards ceremony: Paul Farley

Paul Farley

Paul Farley is an award-winning English poet. He studied painting at the Chelsea School of Art, and has lived in London, Brighton and Cumbria...

2009

2009 in poetry

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* January 5 – The Turkish government announces it will posthumously restore the citizenship it had stripped from influential poet Nazim Hikmet, a Marxist who died in 1963 as an exile in the Soviet...

Canada:

• A.F. Moritz, The Sentinel
• Kevin Connolly
  Kevin Connolly (writer)
  -Biography:Kevin Connolly is a Canadian poet, free-lance editor and critic who was born in Biloxi, Mississippi and grew up in Maple, Ontario. Connolly has served as an editor for presses such as ECW Press, House of Anansi Press and Coach House Press...
  
  , Revolver
• Jeramy Dodds
  Jeramy Dodds
  Jeramy Dodds is a Canadian poet.Born in Ajax, Ontario, Dodds grew up in Orono, Ontario. He studied English Literature and Anthropology at Trent University, Medieval Icelandic Studies at The University of Iceland, and has worked as a research archaeologist in Canada...
  
  , Crabwise to the Hounds

International:

• C.D. Wright, Rising, Falling, Hovering
• Mick Imlah
  Mick Imlah
  Michael Ogilvie Imlah , better known as Mick Imlah, was a Scottish poet and editor.-Background:Imlah was brought up in Milngavie near Glasgow, before moving to Beckenham, Kent in 1966. He was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he subsequently taught as a Junior Fellow...
  
  , The Lost Leader
• Derek Mahon, Life on Earth
• Dean Young
  Dean Young (poet)
  Dean Young is a contemporary American poet in the poetic lineage of John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, and Kenneth Koch. Often cited as a second-generation New York School poet, Young also derives influence and inspiration from the work of André Breton, Paul Éluard, and the other French Surrealist poets,...
  
  , Primitive Mentor

Judges:

• Saskia Hamilton
  Saskia Hamilton
  Saskia Hamilton is an American poet. She graduated from Kenyon College with a B.A., and from New York University with an M.A. She worked for the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the Lannan Foundation...
  
  
• Dennis O'Driscoll
  Dennis O'Driscoll
  Dennis O’Driscoll is an Irish poet, essayist, critic, and editor born in Thurles, County Tipperary, Ireland. Although not widely recognized in the United States, he is considered one of the best European poets of his time. In all, he has written eight books of poetry, two chapbooks, and a...
  
  
• Michael Redhill
  Michael Redhill
  Michael Redhill is an American-born Canadian poet, playwright and novelist.Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Redhill was raised in the metropolitan Toronto, Ontario area. He pursued one year of study at Indiana University, and then returned to Canada, completing his education at York University and the...
  
  

Lifetime Recognition Award (presented by the Griffin trustees) to Hans Magnus Enzensberger

Hans Magnus Enzensberger

Hans Magnus Enzensberger , is a German author, poet, translator, and editor. He has also written under the pseudonym Andreas Thalmayr. He lives in Munich.- Life :...

Guest speaker at awards ceremony: James Wood

James Wood (critic)

James Wood is a literary critic, essayist and novelist. he is Professor of the Practice of Literary Criticism at Harvard University and a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine.-Background and education:...

2010

2010 in poetry

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* January 19 - For the first time since 1949, an anonymous black-clad man, known as the Poe Toaster, failed to show up at the tomb of Edgar Allan Poe at the Westminster Hall and Burying Ground, early...

Canada:

• Karen Solie
  Karen Solie
  Karen Solie is a Canadian poet.Born in Moose Jaw, Solie grew up on the family farm in southwest Saskatchewan. Over the years, she has worked as a farm hand, an espresso jerk, a groundskeeper, a newspaper reporter/photographer, an academic research assistant, and an English teacher...
  
  , Pigeon
• Kate Hall, The Certainty Dream
• P.K. Page, Coal and Roses

International:

• Eilean Ni Chuilleanain
  Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin
  Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin is an Irish poet born in Cork .-Life:Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin is the daughter of Eilís Dillon and Professor Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin. She was educated at University College Cork and The University of Oxford. She lives in Dublin with her husband Macdara Woods, and they have one...
  
  , The Sun-fish
• John Glenday
  John Glenday
  -Life:John graduated as a psychiatric nurse and worked in Dundee for many years. In 1990-91, he was appointed the Scottish/Canadian Exchange Fellow at the University of Alberta. He has taught at the Banff Centre. He lives in Drumnadrochit, Scotland, with his wife Erika...
  
  , Grain
• Louise Gluck
  Louise Glück
  Louise Elisabeth Glück is an American poet of Hungarian Jewish heritage. She was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 2003, after serving as a Special Bicentennial Consultant three years prior in 2000....
  
  , A Village Life
• Susan Wicks
  Susan Wicks
  Susan Wicks is a British poet, and novelist.She studied at the University of Hull, University of Sussex. She taught at University College, Dublin, University of Dijon, and the University of Kent....
  
  , translation of Cold Spring in Winter by Valerie Rouzeau

Judges:

• Anne Carson
  Anne Carson
  Anne Carson is a Canadian poet, essayist, translator and professor of Classics. Carson lived in Montreal for several years and taught at McGill University, the University of Michigan, and at Princeton University from 1980-1987....
  
  
• Kathleen Jamie
  Kathleen Jamie
  Kathleen Jamie FRSL is a Scottish poet, raised in Currie, Edinburgh. She gained an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh....
  
  
• Carl Phillips
  Carl Phillips
  Carl Phillips is an American writer and poet. He is a Professor of English and of African and Afro-American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis....
  
  

Lifetime Recognition Award (presented by the Griffin trustees) to Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Cecile Rich is an American poet, essayist and feminist. She has been called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century."-Early life:...

Guest speaker at awards ceremony: Glyn Maxwell

Glyn Maxwell

Glyn Maxwell is a British poet.-Early life:Though his parents are Welsh, Maxwell was born and raised in Welwyn Garden City in Hertfordshire. He studied English at Worcester College, Oxford. He began an MLitt there, but in 1987 moved to America to study poetry and drama with Derek Walcott at...

2011

2011 in poetry

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:June 12 – A poet and student, Ayat al-Ghermezi of Bahrain, is sentenced to a year in prison as part of that kingdom's crackdown on Shiite protesters calling for greater rights...

Canada:

• Dionne Brand
  Dionne Brand
  Dionne Brand is a Canadian poet, novelist, essayist and documentarian. She was named Toronto's third Poet Laureate in September 2009.-Biography:...
  
  , Ossuaries
• Suzanne Buffam
  Suzanne Buffam
  Suzanne Buffam is a Canadian poet, author of two collections of poetry. Her first, Past Imperfect , won the Gerald Lampert Award in 2006. Her second, The Irrationalist , was shortlisted for the 2011 Griffin Poetry Prize...
  
  , The Irrationalist
• John Steffler
  John Steffler
  -Biography:Born in Toronto, Ontario, Steffler was educated at the University of Toronto and the University of Guelph. Since 1975 he has lived in Corner Brook, Newfoundland and Labrador where he taught at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College...
  
  , Lookout

International:

• Gjertrud Schnackenberg
  Gjertrud Schnackenberg
  Gjertrud Schnackenberg is an American poet.-Life:Schnackenberg graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1975. She lectured at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Washington University, and was Writer-in-Residence at Smith College and visiting fellow at St...
  
  , Heavenly Questions
• Seamus Heaney
  Seamus Heaney
  Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer. He lives in Dublin. Heaney has received the Nobel Prize in Literature , the Golden Wreath of Poetry , T. S. Eliot Prize and two Whitbread prizes...
  
  , Human Chain
• Khaled Mattawa
  Khaled Mattawa
  Khaled Mattawa is a Libyan poet, and a renowned Arab-American writer, he is also a leading literary translator, focusing on translating Arabic poetry into English...
  
  , translation of Adonis: Selected Poems by Adonis
• Philip Mosley, translation of The Book of the Snow by Francois Jacqmin

Judges:

• Tim Lilburn
  Tim Lilburn
  Tim Lilburn is a Canadian poet and essayist. He is the author of several critically acclaimed collections of poetry, including Kill-site, To the River, Moosewood Sandhills and his latest work Going Home...
  
  
• Colm Toibin
  Colm Tóibín
  Colm Tóibín is a multi-award-winning Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, journalist, critic, and, most recently, poet.Tóibín is Leonard Milberg Lecturer in Irish Letters at Princeton University in New Jersey and succeeded Martin Amis as professor of creative writing at the...
  
  
• Chase Twichell
  Chase Twichell
  Chase Twichell is an American poet, professor, and publisher, the founder in 1999, of Ausable Press. Her most recent poetry collection is Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been, which earned her Claremont Graduate University's prestigious $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award....
  
  

Lifetime Recognition Award (presented by the Griffin trustees) to Yves Bonnefoy

Yves Bonnefoy

Yves Bonnefoy is a French poet and essayist. Bonnefoy was born in Tours, Indre-et-Loire, the son of a railroad worker and a teacher....

Guest performer at awards ceremony: Jonathan Welstead, Poetry In Voice recitation champion

See also

• Canadian poetry
  Canadian poetry
  - Beginnings:The earliest works of poetry, mainly written by visitors, described the new territories in optimistic terms, mainly targeted at a European audience...
  
  
• List of poetry awards
• List of years in poetry
• List of years in literature

External links

• Griffin Poetry Prize official website
• Poetry readings podcast feed
• Griffin Poetry Prize on Twitter
• Griffin Poetry Prize on YouTube
• Griffin Poetry Prize on Facebook
• Poetry In Voice/Les voix de la poésie website
• Poets performing prose is the real prize Toronto Star
• Griffin Poetry Prize doubles award money The Globe and Mail
• Griffin Poetry Prize turns 10 Toronto Star