Judges for the 2012 Griffin Poetry Prize Announced

TORONTO – September 21, 2011 – The trustees of The Griffin Trust For Excellence In Poetry are pleased to announce that Heather McHugh (USA), David O’Meara (Canada), and Fiona Sampson (UK) are the judges for the 2012 Griffin Poetry Prize.

Heather McHugh was born in San Diego, California. She has published volumes of poetry, translation and essays, and for over 35 years has taught and lectured at universities. She is Pollock Professor of Poetry at the University of Washington, and one of the original visiting faculty at the fabled Warren Wilson MFA Program in Asheville, NC. In 2001, she and Nikolai Popov won the inaugural International Griffin Poetry Prize for their translation of Glottal Stop: 101 Poems by Paul Celan. In 2009 she was named a MacArthur Fellow. Her most recent volume of poetry, Upgraded to Serious, was published in the US and Canada. (Click here for additional bio details.)

David O’Meara was born in Pembroke, Ontario. He is the author of three collections of poetry, and a play, Disaster. His most recent book is Noble Gas, Penny Black. His work has appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies, including The New Canon, and The Echoing Years, a co-Irish/Canadian anthology. He has been shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award, the ReLit Prize, the Trillium Prize, a National Magazine Award, four Rideau Awards (theatre), and was twice winner of the Archibald Lampman Award. He is director of the renowned Plan 99 Reading Series, a founding director of VerseFest, Canada’s International Poetry Festival, and will be poetry instructor at the Banff Centre in September 2012. He continues to tend bar at the Manx Pub in Ottawa. (Click here for additional bio details.)

Fiona Sampson is a poet, essayist and critic whose most recent books include a new edition of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Music Lessons: The Newcastle Poetry Lectures. Published in more than thirty languages, she has eleven books in translation including Patuvachki Dnevnik, which was awarded the Zlaten Prsten. In 2009, she received a Cholmondeley Award and was elected an FRSL; she has since been elected to the Council of the Royal Society of Literature. She has received the Newdigate Prize, Writer’s Awards from the Arts Councils of England and of Wales and from the Society of Authors and has been shortlisted twice for both the T.S. Eliot Prize and Forward Prizes. She is currently Distinguished Writer at the University of Kingston and Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies, University of London. Her critical survey of contemporary British poetry, Beyond the Lyric will appear in autumn 2012. (Click here for additional bio details.)

All three judges understand the importance of the Griffin Poetry Prize’s international reach and may consequently call in books of English language poetry from around the world.

The shortlisted books (four International and three Canadian) will be announced on Tuesday, April 10, 2012 at a press conference in Toronto, Canada.

The Griffin Trust For Excellence In Poetry is pleased to announce that the Shortlist Readings will take place in the magnificent Koerner Hall at The Royal Conservatory in the TELUS Centre for Performance and Learning, on Wednesday, June 6, 2012.

The winners of the Griffin Poetry Prize will be named at an awards ceremony to be held on Thursday, June 7, 2012.

Note to Publishers:

The submissions deadline for the 2012 Griffin Poetry Prize, for books published between January 1 and December 31, 2011, is Saturday, December 31, 2011. Submitted books must be postmarked no later than December 31, 2011.

If you have any questions regarding the rules, or would like to download an entry form, please visit the How to Enter section of our Web site.

www.griffinpoetryprize.com/rules.php
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For further information, please contact:

Ruth Smith
Griffin Trust Manager
E-mail: info@griffinpoetryprize.com

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