2025 Judges
Nick Laird
Nick Laird was born in Dungannon in County Tyrone in 1975. A poet, novelist, screenwriter, critic, and former lawyer, his awards include the Betty Trask Prize, the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, a Forward Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. For many years he taught at universities in the USA including Columbia, Princeton, and NYU, and is now the Seamus Heaney Professor of Poetry at Queen’s University, Belfast.
Anne Michaels
Anne Michaels is a novelist and poet. Her books have been translated into more than fifty languages and have won dozens of international awards, including the Orange Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Lannan Award for Fiction, and the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for the Americas. Among many other honours, she is a Royal Society of Literature International Writer, a Guggenheim Fellow, has received honorary degrees, and has served as Toronto’s Poet Laureate. Her novel Fugitive Pieces was adapted as a feature film and was chosen as one of the BBC’s 100 Novels that Shaped the World. Her latest novel, Held, is currently shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize.
Tomasz Różycki
Tomasz Różycki was born in 1970 and is a poet, translator, and essayist. He is the author of several volumes of poetry including Hulanki i swawole (2024), and the prose work Zlodzieje zarówek (2023). He garnered critical acclaim for the book-length poem Twelve Stations, and his collection Colonies—both of which, in their original Polish and in translation—earned awards such as Kościelski Prize, the Wisława Szymborska Award, Le Grand Continent Prize, the Samuel Bogumił Prize, the Vaclav Burian Prize, the Joseph Brodsky Award, and the Northern California Book Award. He has been shortlisted for the Nike Prize, the Griffin Poetry Prize, and the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize, among others. Różycki was a fellow of the DAAD Artist-in-Berlin Program in 2018, and was awarded a Senate of Berlin Fellowship in 2020.
Important Dates
december 20, 2024
Deadline for receipt of submissions published between July 1 and December 30, 2024. Find out more on our Submissions page.
March 19, 2025
Griffin Poetry Prize Longlist announced
April 23, 2025
Griffin Poetry Prize Shortlist and Lifetime Recognition Award recipient announced
MAY 21, 2025
Canadian First Book Prize Winner announced
JUNE 4, 2025
Griffin Poetry Prize Readings and Winner announced in Toronto, Canada
The Prize
A History of Excellence
The Griffin Poetry Prize is one of the world’s most generous poetry awards. As of 2023, the prize is worth C$130,000, making it the world’s largest international prize for a single book of poetry written in, or translated into English. The other shortlisted poets each receive $10,000. Explore the 23-year history of the Griffin Poetry Prize here.
Additionally, a new $10,000 prize is awarded for a Canadian First Book of poetry, along with a six-week residency in Italy in partnership with the Civitella Ranieri Foundation to a Canadian Citizen, or permanent resident, for a first book written in English. A Lifetime Recognition Award is awarded by the trustees in the sum of C$25,000.
The Griffin Poetry Prize has been acknowledging and encouraging poets for twenty-two years. At a time when censorship and attacks on a diverse array of writers are on the rise in many countries – including the United States – it’s heartening to see such a strong vote of confidence in poets coming from Canada. Poetry is not a minor art form; it is the crucible of human language.
Margaret Atwood, Founding Trustee