TORONTO – September 17, 2014 – The trustees of The Griffin Trust For Excellence In Poetry are pleased to announce that Tim Bowling (Canada), Fanny Howe (US) and Piotr Sommer (Poland) are the judges for the 2015 Griffin Poetry Prize.
Tim Bowling is the author of twelve poetry collections, including Selected Poems (2013) and Circa Nineteen Hundred and Grief (2014) and of four novels and two works of non-fiction. His work has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, two nominations for the Governor General’s Award, two Writers’ Trust nominations and five Alberta Book Awards. Originally from Ladner, British Columbia, he now resides in Edmonton, Alberta.
Fanny Howe has written numerous books of fiction and poetry and has won a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Ruth Lilly Lifetime Achievement Award, among others. Her most recent collection of poetry, Second Childhood, was published in 2014. She lives in Massachusetts and is currently a Visiting Writer at Brown University.
Piotr Sommer has written numerous books in Polish, including a selected poems Po ciemku tez (2013). His poetry has been translated into many languages. He has also published two books of essays, as well as translations of American, English and Irish verse into Polish. His books in English are Things to Translate (1991), Continued (2005) and Overdoing It (2013). He has taught at several American universities and has been awarded numerous prizes and fellowships. He lives outside of Warsaw, Poland.
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 7, 2015.
The Griffin Trust For Excellence In Poetry is pleased to announce that the Shortlist Readings will take place in Koerner Hall at The Royal Conservatory in the TELUS Centre for Performance and Learning, on Wednesday, June 3, 2015 at 7.30 p.m.
The winners of the Griffin Poetry Prize will be named at an awards ceremony to be held in Toronto on Thursday, June 4, 2015.
The trustees are also pleased to announce that Mark Doty has joined the board of trustees, effective September 1, 2014. Mark Doty is the author of eight books of poems, including Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems, which won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2008; School of the Arts, Source and My Alexandria. He has also published five volumes of nonfiction prose, among them Dog Years, which was named a New York Times bestseller in 2007; Still Life with Oysters and Lemon, Heaven’s Coast and Firebird. The Art of Description, a handbook for writers, appeared in 2011. He is the first American poet to have won the T.S. Eliot Prize in the U.K. and his work has been honoured by the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a Whiting Writers Award, two Lambda Literary Awards and the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund. A new book of poems, Deep Lane, will be published in April 2015. He is at work on What is the Grass, a prose meditation on Walt Whitman’s life and poetry. He teaches at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey and lives in New York City.
Note to Publishers:
The submissions deadline for the 2015 Griffin Poetry Prize, for books published between January 1 and December 31, 2014, is Wednesday, December 31, 2014. Submitted books must be postmarked no later than this date.
If you have any questions regarding the rules, or would like to download an entry form, please visit our web site, at: /how-to-enter/rules.
– 30 –
For further information, please contact:
Ruth Smith
Manager
Email: info@griffinpoetryprize.com
Tel: (905) 618 0420