The Winner of the 2025 Griffin Poetry Prize Has Been Announced!

A very fancy and inspiring evening at the Griffin Poetry Prize awards has concluded, and Psyche Running by Karen Leeder (translated from the German written by Durs Grünbein) has won the 2025 edition of the world's richest prize in the form. This came after the Griffin Prize readings, alll of which was hosted at the beautiful Koerner Hall, with many of the finalists taking to the stage to share their words with a star-studded international audience. 

The winner receives $130,000. The remaining shortlisted writers each receive $10,000.

The evening included a conversation with Margaret Atwood (who was also recently named as the recipient of the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award) and Carolyn Forché, and readings by the 2025 shortlisted poets, Aaron Coleman, Durs Grünbein, Brian Henry, Karen Leeder, Carl Phillips, and Diane Seuss. The event also featured a recitation by one of the 2025 Finalists of Poetry in Voice/Les voix de la poésie, a Canada-wide school recitation competition.

The complete list of finalists this year, as announced late last month, were as follows:

The Great Zoo by Aaron Coleman
Translated from the Spanish written by Nicolás Guillén
The University of Chicago Press

Kiss the Eyes of Peace by Brian Henry
Translated from the Slovenian written by Tomaž Šalamun
Milkweed Editions

Psyche Running by Karen Leeder
Translated from the German written by Durs Grünbein
Seagull Books

Scattered Snows, to the North by Carl Phillips
Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Modern Poetry by Diane Seuss
Graywolf Press

Founded in 2000 by Canadian entrepreneur and philanthropist Scott Griffin, the Griffin Poetry Prize is the world's largest international prize for a single book of poetry written in, or translated into English. In the event a winning book is a translation into English, the Griffin Poetry Prize allocates 60 per cent of the prize to the translator and 40 per cent to the original poet.

The shortlist was selected from 578 books of poetry by a jury including Canadian author and poet Anne Michaels, and international writers Nick Laird and Tomasz Różycki.

A $10,000 prize was also awarded for a Canadian first book of poetry, and that honour went to Dawn Macdonald, author of Northerny. She received the prize money together with a six-week residency in Italy.

Congratulations to all of the winning authors and finalists this year!