Here are the shortlists for the 2013 Griffin Poetry Prize

Earlier this week the shortlists for the Griffin Poetry Prize were announced. Hosted by The Griffin Trust For Excellence In Poetry, the shortlists are divided into two categories: International and Canadian poetry.

International shortlist

• Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me, and Other Poems by Ghassan Zaqtan (translator: Fady Joudah), Yale University Press
• Liquid Nitrogen by Jennifer Maiden, Giramondo Publishing
• Night of the Republic by Alan Shapiro, Houghton Mifflin
• Our Andromeda by Brenda Shaughnessy, Copper Canyon Press

Canadian shortlist

• What's the Score by David McFadden, Mansfield Press
• Sailing to Babylon by James Pollock, Able Muse Press
• Personals by Ian Williams, Freehand Books

For all the details on the awards and the 2013 shortlists, click here.

All of the titles highlighted as links are available in-store and on our website. Click the link to find out more about the book, including how you can get your own copy.

Anne Carson: brilliant, captivating, and charmingly humble

Red Doc>

"It's important to get somehow into the mind and make it move somewhere it has never moved before."

"Some years ago I wrote a book about a boy named Geryon who was red and had wings and fell in love with Herakles. Recently I began to wonder what happened to them in later life. Red Doc> continues their adventures in a very different style and with changed names. To live past the end of your myth is a perilous thing."

- Anne Carson

A literary event: a follow-up to the internationally acclaimed poetry bestseller Autobiography of Red ("Amazing" - Alice Munro) that takes its mythic boy-hero into the twenty-first century to tell a story all its own of love, loss, and the power of memory.

Read More...

Poetry in the Morning

I have often been troubled by the uncomfortable feeling that poetry and I don't get along as well as we should. What was I missing? Apparently, it was sleep.

I have recently discovered that if I sit down with a poem first thing in the morning, it springs forth from the page like nobody's business with barely an effort from me. I am immersed, entranced, all those things. Emboldened by my discovery, and after dabbling in some of the lit mags - Prairie Fire, The Fiddlehead, Grain, CV2 - I thought I'd tackle a book. Happily, I had plenty to choose from, but found myself intrigued by Sarah Klassen's recent book of poetry Monstrance.

Do you know what a monstrance is? Neither did I. According to the title poem (and Websters) it is: "A vessel in which the consecrated host is exposed to receive the veneration of the faithful." The key words and phrases here are vessel, consecrated host, exposed, veneration, and faithful. But sometimes a chalice or a crown or a cross is no more than the wood or metal out of which it is made, even for the faithful. The act of imagination that invests the ordinary with the divine sometimes takes place and sometimes it does not. This intermingling of the divine and the mundane is what gives Klassen's poems their power. The objects held, the places visited leave us standing simultaneously in the world of spirit and the world of the mundane. It makes for a profound sense of spiritual longing that is sustained throughout. Of course, this equally applies to the book itself. Monstrance is a monstrance.

So yes, blown away, I am. And looking for more. Next up? I've got my eye on a book of poetry by Victor Enns, also recently published. It's called Boy. So far, I've only dabbled in it, but I'm getting ready to take the plunge.

Poetry in the morning? It's better than a good cup of coffee.

Shortlist Announced for the 2012 Griffin Poetry Prize

Scott Griffin, founder of The Griffin Trust For Excellence In Poetry and David Young, trustee, announced the International and Canadian shortlist for this year's prize. Judges Heather McHugh (USA), David O'Meara (Canada) and Fiona Sampson (England) each read 481 books of poetry, from 37 countries, including 19 translations.

The seven finalists - four International and three Canadian - will be invited to read in Toronto at Koerner Hall at The Royal Conservatory in the TELUS Centre for Performance and Learning, 273 Bloor Street West, Toronto on Wednesday, June 6th. The seven finalists will each be awarded $10,000 for their participation in the Shortlist Readings.

The winners, announced at the Griffin Poetry Prize Awards evening on Thursday, June 7th, will each be awarded $65,000.

International Shortlist

Night by David Harsent, Faber and Faber

The Chameleon Couch by Yusef Komunyakaa, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

November by Sean O'Brien, Picador

Sobbing Superpower: Selected Poems of Tadeusz Rozewicz by Joanna Trzeciak, translated from the Polish written by Tadeusz Rozewicz, W.W. Norton & Company

Canadian Shortlist

Methodist Hatchet by Ken Babstock, House of Anansi Press

Killdeer by Phil Hall, BookThug

Forge by Jan Zwicky, Gaspereau Press