A Crash Course in Molotov Cocktails Shortlisted
School of Instructions Shortlisted
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, USA
Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence Shortlisted
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
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