Author Description

"The world's premier international poetry prize."-Macleans published in English internationally and in Canada are honoured each year with the $65,000 Griffin Poetry Prize, one of the world's most prestigious and valuable literary awards. Since 2001 this annual prize has acted as a tremendous spur to interest in and recognition of poetry, focusing worldwide attention on the formidable talent of poets writing in English. And each year the editor of The Griffon Party Prize Anthology gathers the work of the extraordinary poets shortlisted for the awards and introduces us to some of the finest poems in their collections. This year, editor A.F. Moritz's selections from the international shortlist include poems from John Glenday's Grain (Picador), Lousie Gluck's A Village Life (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux), EilTan Ni Chuilleanain's The Sun-fish (the Gallery Press), and Valerie Rouzeau's Cold Spring in Winter (Arc Publications), Translated by Susan Wicks. The selection from the Canadian shortlist includes poems from Kate Hall's The Certainty Dream (Coach House Books), P.K. Page's Coal and Roses (The Porcupine's Quill), and Karen Solie's Pigeon (House of Anansi Press). In choosing the 2010 Shortlist, prize jurors Anne Carson, Kathleen Jamie, and Carl Phillips considered almost 400 collections published in the previous year, including 12 translations from 12 countries. The jury also wrote the citations that introduce the seven poets' nominated works. Royalties generated form The 2010 Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology will be donated to UNESCO's World Poetry Day, which was created to support linguistic diversity through poetic expression and to offer endangered languages the opportunity to be heard in their communities.