Griffin Prize 2021 Shortlists Announced, With Canadian Nominations for Dandurand, Lubrin, & Saadi

The head honcho of poetry prizes, the Griffin Prizes, announced their international and Canadian shortlists today, and poetry fans are thrilled. 

On the Canadian side, Joseph Dandurand was nominated for East Side of It All (Nightwood Editions), Canisia Lubrin for The Dyzgraphxst (McClelland & Stewart Ltd.), and Yusaf Saadi for Pluviophile (also Nightwood Editions). 

It's a particularly good year for Lubrin, who was recently awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize (valued at $165,000). 

On the international shortlist, American poet Victoria Chang is nominated for for Obit, Belarusian poet Valzhyna Mort for Music for the Dead and Resurrected, and Indian-American writer Srikanth Reddy for Underworld Lit. The final international nomination is shared between translator team Tracy K. Smith and Changtai Bi and Chinese poet Yi Lei, whose work Smith and Bi translated in My Name Will Grow Wide Like a Tree.

Both the Canadian and international winners will be announced on Wednesday, June 23, 2021. Each will take home $65,000, while the remaining finalists will be awarded $10,000. 

The judges for both Griffin Prizes, Ilya Kaminsky (Ukraine), Aleš Šteger (Slovenia), and Souvankham Thammavongsa (Canada) read 682 books of poetry, including 55 translations from 28 languages. Collections were submitted by 231 publishers from 14 different countries.

For more information, visit the Griffin Poetry Prize website.