Skip to content

2024 Shortlist and Lifetime Recognition Award Recipient

Amelia M. GlaserUSA and Yuliya IlchukUkraine

A Crash Course in Molotov Cocktails Shortlisted

translated from the Ukrainian written by
Halyna KrukUkraine
Arrowsmith Press, USA

To 2040 Shortlisted

Copper Canyon Press, USA

School of Instructions Shortlisted

Faber & Faber, UK
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, USA

Door Shortlisted

Penguin Books USA, USA
George McWhirterCanada/Northern Ireland

Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence Winner

translated from the Spanish written by
Homero AridjisMexico
New Directions Publishing, USA

TORONTO – April 17, 2024 – The Griffin Poetry Prize is pleased to announce the 2024 Shortlist and Don McKay (Canada) as the 2024 Lifetime Recognition Award recipient

A Crash Course in Molotov Cocktails ● Amelia M. Glaser, USA, and Yuliya Ilchuk, Ukraine, translated from the Ukrainian written by Halyna Kruk, Ukraine, Arrowsmith Press

To 2040 ● Jorie Graham, USA, Copper Canyon Press

School of Instructions ● Ishion Hutchinson, Jamaica, Faber & Faber, and Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Door ● Ann Lauterbach, USA, Penguin Books

Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence ● George McWhirter, Canada/Northern Ireland, translated from the Spanish written by Homero Aridjis, Mexico, New Directions Publishing

Judges Albert F. Moritz (Canada), Jan Wagner (Germany), and Anne Waldman (USA) each read 592 books of poetry, including 49 translations from 22 languages, submitted by 235 publishers from 14 different countries.

Instituted in 2006, the Griffin trustees bestow the Lifetime Recognition Award to international artists working in poetry.

The Readings will be held at Koerner Hall on Wednesday, June 5 and the evening will include readings by the 2024 Shortlisted poets, Don McKay, and the Canadian First Book Prize winner – to be announced on May 29. The event will also feature a recitation by one of the 2024 Finalists of Poetry in Voice/Les voix de la poésie, a Canada-wide school recitation competition.

Tickets for the 2024 Griffin Poetry Prize Readings are now on sale and can be purchased at the box office of Koerner Hall, 273 Bloor Street West or online.

General Admission, inc. 2024 Anthology – $30.00

Senior/Student, inc. 2024 Anthology – $25.00

To purchase this year’s Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology, contact your favourite bookstore to pre-order. If you’re interested in anthologies from previous years, visit the House of Anansi Press

Note to Booksellers:  Griffin Poetry Prize book stickers are supplied free of charge.  Please contact Ruth Smith at info@griffinpoetryprize.com to place an order.  


Lifetime recognition award

Don McKay

Photo credit: Marlene Creates

Don McKay’s books of poetry include Birding, or Desire (1983), Night Field (1991), Apparatus (1997), Another Gravity (2000), Strike/Slip (2006), Paradoxides (2012) and Lurch (2021). Camber: selected poems, appeared in 2004. Five of his books have been nominated for Governor General’s Awards, and two of them—Night Field and Another Gravity—received that award. He has been nominated for the Griffin Poetry Prize three times and received it for Strike/Slip in 2007. Between 1975 and 2018 he served as co-editor and co-publisher with Brick Books. After teaching English and Creative Writing at the Universities of Western Ontario and New Brunswick for twenty-seven years, he now writes full time. From 1991 to 1997 he edited The Fiddlehead, and he has served as a workshop leader for many institutions and writers’ groups. He was the Associate Director for poetry at the Banff Centre for the Arts for 14 years. His abiding interest in natural history and the environment has led to four books on the poetics of wilderness: Vis à Vis (2001), Deactivated West 100 (2005), The Shell of the Tortoise (2011), and All New Animal Acts (2020). His collected poems, Angular Unconformity, was published in 2014. In 2009 he was named to the Order of Canada.

Don McKay currently makes his home in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador.


Media Inquiries: Melissa Shirley, (647) 389-9510, publicity@griffinpoetryprize.com

General Inquiries: Ruth Smith, Executive Director, (905) 618-0420, info@griffinpoetryprize.com


News Archive

2024 Canadian First Book Prize Winner

TORONTO – May 29, 2024 – The Griffin Poetry Prize is pleased to announce that Maggie Burton, author of Chores, is the winner of the 2024 Canadian …

2024 Announcements

Mark your calendars for these important announcements. March 20, 2024 Griffin Poetry Prize Longlist of announced April 17, 2024 Griffin Poetry Prize Shortlist announced May …

Announcing the 2025 Judges

TORONTO – September 19, 2024 – The Griffin Poetry Prize is pleased to announce that Nick Laird (Northern Ireland), Anne Michaels (Canada), and Tomasz Różycki …