Copyright © 2021 House of Anansi Press Inc.
Poems copyright © Individual poets
Preface copyright © Souvankham Thammavongsa
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Published in Canada in 2021 and the USA in 2021 by House of Anansi Press Inc.
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
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Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada
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Cover design: Chloé Griffin and Kyra Griffin
Inset cover artwork: Lois Dodd (American, b. 1927), Blue Sky Window, 1979; oil on linen, 56 × 36 inches; © Lois Dodd, courtesy Alexandre Gallery, New York
Full cover image: Aerial view of Rainbow Mountains, sandstone hills in Gansu province, China
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We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council
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The
Griffin
Poetry
Prize
past winners and shortlists of
the griffin poetry prize
2001
International
Yehuda Amichai
Translated by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld
Paul Celan
Translated by Nikolai Popov and Heather McHugh
Fanny Howe
Les Murray
Canadian
Anne Carson
Ghandl of the Qayahl Llaanas
Translated by Robert Bringhurst
Don McKay
2002
International
Victor Hernández Cruz
Christopher Logue
Les Murray
Alice Notley
Canadian
Christian Bök
Eirin Moure
Karen Solie
2003
International
Kathleen Jamie
Paul Muldoon
Gerald Stern
C. D. Wright
Canadian
Margaret Avison
Dionne Brand
P. K. Page
2004
International
Suji Kwock Kim
David Kirby
August Kleinzahler
Louis Simpson
Canadian
Di Brandt
Leslie Greentree
Anne Simpson
2005
International
Fanny Howe
Michael Symmons Roberts
Matthew Rohrer
Charles Simic
Canadian
Roo Borson
George Bowering
Don McKay
2006
International
Kamau Brathwaite
Durs Grünbein
Translated by Michael Hofmann
Michael Palmer
Dunya Mikhail
Translated by Elizabeth Winslow
Canadian
Phil Hall
Sylvia Legris
Erín Moure
2007
International
Paul Farley
Rodney Jones
Frederick Seidel
Charles Wright
Canadian
Ken Babstock
Don McKay
Priscila Uppal
2008
International
John Ashbery
Elaine Equi
César Vallejo
Translated by Clayton Eshleman
David Harsent
Canadian
Robin Blaser
Nicole Brossard
Translated by Robert Majzels and Erín Moure
David W. McFadden
2009
International
Mick Imlah
Derek Mahon
C. D. Wright
Dean Young
Canadian
Kevin Connolly
Jeramy Dodds
A. F. Moritz
2010
International
John Glenday
Louise Glück
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin
Valérie Rouzeau
Translated by Susan Wicks
Canadian
Kate Hall
P. K. Page
Karen Solie
2011
International
Seamus Heaney
Adonis
Translated by Khaled Mattawa
François Jacqmin
Translated by Philip Mosley
Gjertrud Schnackenberg
Canadian
Dionne Brand
Suzanne Buffam
John Steffler
2012
International
David Harsent
Yusef Komunyakaa
Sean O’Brien
Tadeusz Różewicz
Translated by Joanna Trzeciak
Canadian
Ken Babstock
Phil Hall
Jan Zwicky
2013
International
Ghassan Zaqtan
Translated by Fady Joudah
Jennifer Maiden
Alan Shapiro
Brenda Shaughnessy
Canadian
David W. McFadden
James Pollock
Ian Williams
2014
International
Rachael Boast
Brenda Hillman
Carl Phillips
Tomasz Różycki
Translated by Mira Rosenthal
Canadian
Anne Carson
Sue Goyette
Anne Michaels
2015
International
Wang Xiaoni
Translated by Eleanor Goodman
Wioletta Greg
Translated by Marek Kazmierski
Michael Longley
Spencer Reece
Canadian
Shane Book
Jane Munro
Russell Thornton
2016
International
Norman Dubie
Joy Harjo
Don Paterson
Rowan Ricardo Ph
illips
Canadian
Ulrikka S. Gernes
Translated by Per Brask and Patrick Friesen
Liz Howard
Soraya Peerbaye
2017
International
Jane Mead
Abdellatif Laâbi
Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith
Alice Oswald
Denise Riley
Canadian
Jordan Abel
Hoa Nguyen
Sandra Ridley
2018
International
Tongo Eisen-Martin
Susan Howe
Layli Long Soldier
Natalie Shapero
Canadian
Billy-Ray Belcourt
Aisha Sasha John
Donato Mancini
2019
International
Raymond Antrobus
Daniel Borzutzky
Kim Hyesoon
Translated by Don Mee Choi
Luljeta Lleshanaku
Translated by Ani Gjika
Canadian
Dionne Brand
Eve Joseph
Sarah Tolmie
2020
International
Abigail Chabitnoy
Sharon Olds
Etel Adnan
Translated by Sarah Riggs
Natalie Scenters-Zapico
Canadian
Chantal Gibson
Doyali Islam
Kaie Kellough
past recipients of the griffin trust for excellence in poetry lifetime recognition award
Robin Blaser (2006)
Tomas Tranströmer (2007)
Ko Un (2008)
Hans Magnus Enzensberger (2009)
Adrienne Rich (2010)
Yves Bonnefoy (2011)
Seamus Heaney (2012)
Adelia Prado (2014)
Derek Walcott (2015)
Adam Zagajewski (2016)
Frank Bidart (2017)
Ana Blandiana (2018)
Nicole Brossard (2019)
The sight of banker’s boxes is not new to me. I worked in the financial district of Toronto, in a research department as an assistant, for fifteen years, and then went on to prepare taxes. When these boxes from the Griffin Poetry Prize were delivered to me, with more than 680 poetry books from around the world, what I saw was no different from financial or tax reports. Inside these boxes were still records and declarations and observations. Every word and voice survived to make it onto the page. However that is managed and accounted for. There is often very little glamour in poetry. Not so, at the Griffin Prize party each year. It begins with the envelope that holds the invitation. When I first received mine many years ago, I was a writer who printed and bound my own poetry books and sold them out of my school knapsack. I was no one. I would look at the envelope amazed. My name was handwritten, every letter correct. Someone there knew where I lived, the exact address, the street, the apartment number. I took the bus to the party wearing what I thought to be fancy, walked by myself on the cobblestones, and held my breath when someone checked to see if indeed I was invited. “Oh, yes, I see. Right here. Your name,” someone at the front door said. I learned one doesn’t arrive early at these things, but there I was in the room. I took in the sparkle and decorations. Each year they were different, the banners of poets and judges, their faces printed large. Once, I wanted to take away something from the evening. Something no one would notice. Nothing fancy. I saw a fork and took that. A few minutes later a new one was replaced by staff. I saw the poets arrive. They were famous in their countries, all over the world, or not at all. Confident, boisterous, shy, out of place. Helping themselves to the open bar several times, returning again and again. I saw them dance too. A small corner of the room. My favourite thing about the evening is the chocolate fountain. Over the years, I got to see Adrienne Rich, John Ashbery, Seamus Heaney, Tomas Tranströmer . . . Once, I knelt on one knee to talk to Adrienne Rich. She asked me what the title of my poetry book was, and I told her. She took my hand and held it, closed her eyes, and nodded. After some time, she said, “I remember that book.” Perhaps this is what you say to someone to give them the idea to imagine what is possible for themselves. True or not, does not matter — she made me feel like it was true. I am describing all this because I am thinking of Ilya Kaminsky and Aleš Šteger, who were there with me this year in our reading, but because of a pandemic we have not met in person and will not meet for now, won’t know about the readings we could have heard, or be at a party celebrating the poetry and the poets we listed. The small and private moments we would get to have just by observation or being in the same room with each other. The things we’d wish people wouldn’t know or the things people would see without our knowing. In our discussions, Ilya and Aleš too would say, “I remember that book.” And although this anthology is about the writers whose names and books we will know with this prize, I wish to take a moment to address those who are not in this book. It is unusual to do so, but I want to say: You have no idea how close you came, and however meaningful or meaningless that is to you — you can’t ever know just how close. Because it has been said to me before, and I know the feeling, I say this to you now, down on one knee: “I remember that book.”
Souvankham Thammavongsa, Toronto, April 2021
THE GRIFFIN POETRY PRIZE
Anthology 2021
international shortlist titles
Victoria Chang
Obit
Victoria Chang’s Obit achieves a new form for grief and sorrow. Using the familiarity of the obituary, she repurposes the form with the truth that death makes clear, absurd, and funny. Death is not something that happens to someone else — it is yours too, up close and personal, and deeply particular. It is not just a name or person or relation that dies — it is a frontal lobe, language inside the phone, the voice mail, the view and experience, the language they made or didn’t make, their sounds too. The self that knew them. Privacy, friendships, gait, logic, optimism, ambition, tears, reason, a chair. Every bit of a lived life gets a spot. In this book, “grief takes many / forms, as tears or pinwheels . . . ,” “dying lasts / forever until it stops,” and “our sadness is plural, but grief is / singular.”
My Father’s Frontal Lobe—died
unpeacefully of a stroke on June 24,
2009 at Scripps Memorial Hospital in
San Diego, California. Born January
20, 1940, the frontal lobe enjoyed a
good life. The frontal lobe loved being
the boss. It tried to talk again but
someone put a bag over it. When the
frontal lobe died, it sucked in its lips like
a window pulled shut. At the funeral
for his words, my father wouldn’t stop
talking and his love passed through
me, fell onto the ground that wasn’t
there. I could hear someone stomping
their feet. The body is as confusing as
language—was the frontal lobe having
a tantrum or dancing? When I took
my father’s phone away, his words
died in the plastic coffin. At the funeral
for his words, we argued about my
miscarriage. It’s not really a baby, he
said. I ran out of words, stomped out to
shake the dead baby awake. I thought
of the tech who put the wand down,
quietly left the room when she couldn’t
find the heartbeat. I understood then
that darkness is falling without an end.
That darkness is not the absorption of
color but the absorp
tion of language.
Victoria Chang—died unknowingly on
June 24, 2009 on the I-405 freeway.
Born in the Motor City, it is fitting
she died on a freeway. When her
mother called about her father’s heart
attack, she was living an indented
life, a swallow that didn’t dip. This
was not her first death. All her deaths
had creases except this one. It didn’t
matter that her mother was wrong (it
was a stroke) but that Victoria Chang
had to ask whether she should drive to
see the frontal lobe. When her mother
said yes, Victoria Chang had the
feeling of not wanting to. Someone
heard that feeling. Because he did
not die but all of his words did. At the
hospital, Victoria Chang cried when
her father no longer made sense. This
was before she understood the cruelty
of his disease. It would be the last time
she cried in front of it. She switched
places with her shadow because
suffering changes shape and happens
secretly.
Language—died, brilliant and beautiful
on August 1, 2009 at 2:46 p.m. Lover
of raising his hand, language lived
a full life of questioning. His favorite
was twisting what others said. His
favorite was to write the world in black
and white and then watch people try
and read the words in color. Letters
used to skim my father’s brain before
they let go. Now his words are blind.
Are pleated. Are the dispatcher, the
dispatches, and the receiver. When
my mother was dying, I made everyone
stand around the bed for what would
be the last group photo. Some of us
even smiled. Because dying lasts
forever until it stops. Someone said,
Take a few. Someone said, Say
cheese. Someone said, Thank you.
Language fails us. In the way that
breaking an arm means an arm’s bone
can break but the arm itself can’t break
off unless sawed or cut. My mother
couldn’t speak but her eyes were the