The 2015 Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology: A Selection of the Shortlist

by Tim Bowling (Editor), Griffin Poetry Prize Judges (Editor)

The highly anticipated annual anthology of the best Canadian and international poetry.

Each year, the best books of poetry published in English internationally and in Canada are honoured with the Griffin Poetry Prize, one of the world’s most prestigious and richest literary awards. Since 2001 this annual prize has acted as a tremendous spur to interest in and recognition of poetry, focusing worldwide attention on the formidable talent of poets writing in English. And each year The Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology features the work of the extraordinary poets shortlisted for the awards, and introduces us to some of the finest poems in their collections.

In choosing the 2015 shortlist, prize jurors Tim Bowling, Fanny Howe, and Piotr Sommer will consider hundreds of collections published in 2014. The jury members will also write the citations that introduce the seven poets’ nominated works.

Royalties generated from The 2015 Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology will be donated to UNESCO’s World Poetry Day, which was created to support linguistic diversity through poetic expression and to offer endangered languages the opportunity to be heard in their communities.

Shortlist to be announced: April 7, 2015
Readings: June 3, 2015
Prizes awarded: June 4, 2015

Genres: Poetry

128 pages, Paperback

First published June 9, 2015

Reviews

[Edwin Lang · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology (2015) comprises international and Canadian poets who were selected by a small group of contemporary poets, including Tim Bowled (editor), Fanny Howe and Piotr Sommer. None of whom alas I had known. I felt in reading this book my world opened up, and became that much more deeply enriched. I began the reading in April and finished today, August 4th. It was a hard read, slow, challenging, sometimes exasperating.

The ice broke, finally in May, when I read a poem by Canadian Russell Thornton, The Larissa Gypsies, where a Gypsy family is eating in a Greek taverna when they have an altercation with the owner. He writes near the end: “These women, awkward and uncouth at the world’s table – they are the unbroken ones, never to be corralled, fierce, free ..… they are like the winds from a wildly loved nowhere, laden with savage roses ...”

The poems I liked best though were those of the Chinese Wang Xiaoni, translated by Eleanor Goodman. Maybe two months ago I read her “The One Sticking Close to the Wall”

- He sticks close to himself as he leaves - His soul follows close behind
- He doesn’t notice the separation at all - Doesn’t care for that old thing
…
- Caring only for himself he hurries along, Sticking to the wretched graying wall
..
- If he walks a little faster He might lose that anxious tail

In reading this we can almost feel the pain, desperation and panic of the soul that had become separated from the man. Someone said, and I lost track of who, that given that our bodies house our souls, then poets are the interior decorators of the mind.

Poetry is so precise and concise, and always so suggestive that in trying to understand the poet and their poetry one opens up to the world in a new way. I came across three people specifically in this quest when reading this anthology. One was a 13th Century saint and mystic, Angela of Foligno, who said ‘there is in my soul a chamber in which no joy, sadness or enjoyment or delight enters. This is where All Good resides, and I am alone, cleansed, sanctified, true, upright, certain, celestial.’ Another, Robert Lax, a poet and contemplative and who died in 2000, said that ‘life is about learning how to flow with t your basic goodness. It is about entering the heart and making it the fount of your being”. The third, Jim Harrison whose book of poetry (In Search of Small Gods I bought in 2011 after a long (and wine-filled) lunch with a daughter at il Fornello: I had made a note explaining that I had bought it because I liked the dedication page - "Walker, your footsteps are the road, and nothing more ..." by Antonio Machado. What made this purchase significant was that I forgot about this purchase in 2011 but read just this year, coincidentally, Jim Harrison's Warlock.

The anthology included so many interesting, fun and stimulating poems, and included the Polish poet Wioletta Greg, Irish Michael Longley, priest Spencer Reece and two more Canadians, Shane Book (whose poems I found disturbing) and Jane Munro with a long poem about ‘her old man’, her husband she cares for (day in and day out) but who is down and out with Alzheimers.

Edwin

[Jay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book#2 of My Year of Poetry
Found the collection was —unintentionally? — biased towards authors who wrote books about grief/loss in 2014/2015. Lovely work; memorable lines; delightful references. Jane Munro’s work was my fave.

[Jules · Rating 4 out of 5]

This anthology is satisfying in its breadth and scope, filled with poems by international and Canadian authors. Spencer Reeces's The Road to Emmaus stands out in this collection, with its original lines and compelling narrative style. The introductory notes to the poems are brief, just enough to provide a glimpse into the poet's work, and themes.

[Andrea McDowell · Rating 4 out of 5]

For me, Spencer Reece and Jane Munro were the standouts in this year's anthology.

[Kenny Costa · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are some gems in here. May pick up more writing from Russell Thornton or Spencer Reece. Jane Munro good too.

[Billy · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were some really good poems in here, some I had to sticky note so I can come back and read them again.