Canada's most generous poetry award, founded by businessman and philanthropist Scott Griffin.
2000-2004 Coverage
The following are highlights of media coverage of the Griffin Poetry Prize and its principals from 2000 to 2004, including the launch of the prize.
Note: Some of the links included here require publication subscriptions or registrations.
November 7, 2004 Talking with August Kleinzahler
Poet and Memoirist Growing Up Jersey
By Philip Connors
Cutty, One Rock (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $19), which includes the title essay and eight others, many of them also published in the London Review, is an unexpected debut in prose for August Kleinzahler. Known in this country chiefly as a poet, he writes hilariously in Cutty about growing up Jewish in an Italian neighborhood of Fort Lee, N.J., where the school playground “was like a theme park for Tourette’s syndrome.”
Margaret Atwood and Robert Bringhurst talk to Ian MacMillan about the Classical Hyda Mythtellers, the native American stories which Atwood describes as ‘An American Iliad’.
October 30, 2004
Hot ticket: Canadian poets
by Elizabeth Renzetti
LONDON — The Griffin Poetry Prize rolled into London this week, and conquered without even firing a shot. It was a red-carpet greeting for Canadian writers during the Poetry International festival in London. A reading featuring five writers, including Margaret Atwood and Anne Carson, was standing-room only at the Royal Festival Hall, and The Times Literary Supplement commissioned and published poems from four of the poets on the bill.
The reading “is the hot ticket of the festival,” said Scott Griffin, benefactor of the Griffin Prize and a one-man campaign to put poetry at the centre of cultural life. “It will be a significant cut above what else you’ve seen. It really will be the highlight of the festival.”
July 28, 2004 Deep-Sea Creature August Kleinzahler never wrote a best-seller. Award-winning poets seldom do.
by Jonathan Kiefer
In person Kleinzahler is more an even and amiable listener than the cranky, judgmental, viciously funny son-of-a-bitch he can be in print.
July, 2004
The Griffin Poetry Prize 2004 The Ambassador – Canada Cuba Literary Alliance magazine
by Kimberley E. Grove
On Wednesday, June 2, the Cinderella story came to life for the Canadian poetry scene. Instead of the usual small gathering of 20-30 committed poetry fans, the large auditorium at the Edward Johnson building was filled.
El 2 de junio, la historia de Cenicienta se hizo realidad para el panorama de la poesía canadiense. En lugar de la usualmente pequeña reunión de 20 a 30 admiradores comprometidos con la poesía, el gran auditorio del edificio Edward Johnson estaba lleno.
June 19, 2004 Wanted: verse of distinction Review of The Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology: A Selection of the 2004 Shortlist
by Fraser Sutherland
By now we know which two poets won this year’s Griffin Poetry Prize. From Canadian candidates, the judges – Phyllis Webb and two former national poets laureate, Bill Manhire of New Zealand and Billy Collins of the United States – chose Anne Simpson for Loop, bleak, well-wrought poems about history’s nightmares. Simpson conducts exhumations and postmortems, and tracks the scars of the human record.
June 16, 2004 Low-profile writer wins lucrative poetry prize
by Claudia La Rocco
The Associated Press
August Kleinzahler, a fiercely independent poet who has never hidden his disdain for the creative writing establishment, was awarded the $29,200 [US] Griffin Poetry Prize earlier this month for his latest collection, “The Strange Hours Travelers Keep.”
June 4, 2004 U.S. Poet Wins Canadian Poetry Prize
By Colin McClelland
Associated Press Writer
U.S. poet August Kleinzahler has won one of the world’s most prestigious poetry prizes, Canada’s $29,200 Griffin Prize, for his book, “The Strange Hours Travelers Keep.”
June 4, 2004 Poets Simpson, Kleinzahler share $80,000 Griffin Prize
Two poets – an Atlantic Canadian and an American with a Canadian pedigree – were named winners of the 2004 Griffin Poetry Prize in Toronto Thursday evening.
Griffin Prize for Poetry Special with Eleanor Wachtel
Last night, the Griffin Prize honoured outstanding poetry from Canada and elsewhere. Tonight, Eleanor Wachtel brings you highlights from the awards gala, along with the poets and their work, in a one-hour special edition of The Arts Today and Between the Covers.
June 4, 2004 Two poets scoop Griffin Cheered by 400 enthusiasts Poetry `coming back in fashion’
by Judy Stoffman
Anne Simpson of Antigonish, N.S., and August Kleinzahler, who lives in San Francisco, split the English-speaking world’s richest poetry prize last night at a gala dinner for 400 hosted at the Distillery District by Toronto philanthropist Scott Griffin.
Nova Scotia poet Anne Simpson was named the Canadian winner of the $40,000 Griffin Poetry Prize for her work Loop, during a raucous ceremony last night in Toronto’s historic Distillery district.
May 30, 2004 To passion and cash It’s Griffin Prize week, which marks the arrival of Canada’s true poetry month – see what a bulging wallet can do?
by Noah Richler
June is … now the true “poetry month” in Canada. It is a development attributable in its entirety to the success of the Griffin Poetry Prize, to be awarded Thursday in Toronto. It is actually quite remarkable, what passion and piles of cash can do.
As they prepare to announce the winners of this year’s lucrative Griffin Prize for poetry, judges Bill Manhire, Billy Collins and Phyllis Webb talk to Rebecca Caldwell about the search for a ‘compelling voice,’ and what it’s like to read 40 books of verse a day.
April 17, 2004 Consider yourself warned
by Clarise Foster
Now You Care, by acclaimed poet and essayist Di Brandt, takes its title from this line in one of the most disturbing pieces in her fifth and most ambitious poetry collection: “Now that it’s much too late/ now you care.”
April 1, 2004 Windsor poet a finalist for two lit prizes Makes Trillium, Griffin short lists
Hopes it will fan interest in verse
by Judy Stoffman
Short lists for two major literary prizes were announced yesterday – a lucky day for poet Di Brandt, who was the only one in the running for both the Trillium prize, Ontario’s highest literary honour, and the Griffin prize, the richest poetry award in the world.
… Elsewhere, the Griffin Trust, sponsor of the world’s richest prizes for poetry – $80,000 – announced the 2004 nominees.
“I’m shaking,” said Di Brandt, on learning she was one of three nominated for the $40,000 prize given to the Canadian winner. “I’m not good at surprises.”
March 31, 2004 Short list for Griffin Poetry Prize unveiled
The short list for the 2004 Griffin Poetry Prize was announced Wednesday. The organizers of the award, which has a purse of $80,000, bill it as “the most lucrative prize to accept books of poetry from any country in the world.”
March, 2004 Jet-propelled jaunts Peter Campion follows the exhilarating leaps of August Kleinzahler’s lively imagination in The Strange Hours Travelers Keep
From the highways of Texas to the quays of Paris, from San Francisco’s Chinatown to the Asiatic steppes: the poems in August Kleinzahler’s latest collection zoom across the map, gaining speed as they go. But there’s seldom any jetlag to this poet’s lines. Travel seems to offer Kleinzahler an array of heightened feeling tones.
December 4, 2003 The Lion’s Share – Griffin Poetry Prize Pays Big Money
“The first objective is to make the statement that poetry and poets are just as important as novelists,” said Scott Griffin, the founder of the Griffin Poetry Trust, which awards two literary prizes annually for poetry written in English.
June 21, 2003 Magnificent Muldoon …
by Richard Sanger
Currently professor of poetry at Oxford, Muldoon has long been recognized as the poet of his generation in Ireland and Britain; with his ninth collection winning both the Pulitzer Prize in the United States, where he has lived for 15 years, and, now, the Griffin Prize in Canada, this wonderfully inventive poet is suddenly receiving his due in North America. And for all those who, like me, have, at times, despaired of the kind of poetry celebrated hereabouts, this is good news, for Muldoon deserves all the honours laid at his feet.
June 21, 2003 … Awesome Avison
by Ken Babstock
If you missed the announcements between then and now, Margaret Avison, one of a small clutch of our living greats, was awarded the Griffin Prize for Excellence in Poetry last Thursday. This volume of new work, Concrete and Wild Carrot, is only her second since a Selected Poems was published in 1991. Avison has already been rightly honoured in her career with two Governor-General’s Awards (1960 and 1989) and is an officer of the Order of Canada.
June 16, 2003 Poetry in the most public of places P.K. Page’s publisher figured a billboard would get the message out there
by Tabassum Siddiqui
When P.K. Page was shortlisted for this year’s prestigious Griffin Poetry Prize, her publisher wanted to do something big. Very big. So he put up a billboard. Which in this age of advertising wouldn’t be too surprising, except for one thing: It features Page’s book of poetry, Planet Earth.
June 14, 2003 Griffin navigates poetry prize to prominence
by Sandra Martin
With his double-breasted blazers, open-necked shirts and diffidence, Scott Griffin always looks slightly adrift at the microphone – like a sailor in search of his yacht. But there is nothing “at sea” about the way the Toronto-based entrepreneur has navigated the Griffin Poetry Prizes from oblivion into the forefront of international literary prominence.
June 13, 2003 Paul Muldoon Wins Griffin Poetry Prize
Associated Press
Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Muldoon has won the Griffin Poetry Prize for his collection, “Moy Sand and Gravel.” The judges praised “Moy Sand and Gravel” as a “merry dance,” full of stories and cradle songs, nursery rhymes, riddles and prayer.
June 13, 2003 Poet, 85, scoops Griffin Margaret Avison first published verse in 1939
She shares $80,000 prize with Irish co-winner
by Judy Stoffman
One of Canada’s senior poets, frail in body but firm of spirit, collected the Griffin poetry prize last night before a rowdy crowd of more than 300 guests at the Stone Distillery, in Toronto’s new entertainment district.
June 13, 2003 Avison wins world’s largest poetry prize
Margaret Avison, one of Canada’s most celebrated poets, has won the world’s most lucrative prize for poetry.
June 12, 2003 Experience dominates Griffin shortlist
by Sandra Martin
Men are short on the ground in the celebrations leading up to the $80,000 Griffin Poetry Prize awards in Toronto tonight. Five of the seven nominees and two of the three judges are women. Does that matter? Only if the choices seem meretricious.
March 28, 2003 Griffin Prize nominees announced
by Sandra Martin
It was not the usual press conference to announce yet another shortlist for yet another literary award. Griffin Prize founder and patron Scott Griffin took to the podium, set up, appropriately enough, in the library bar of the Fairmount Royal York Hotel, and threw out a challenge to the assembled media types in Toronto yesterday.
March 28, 2003 Locals among poetry finalists
by Judy Stoffman
Three women poets, two of whom have been writing verse since the 1930s, are the Canadian finalists for the English-speaking world’s richest poetry prize.
March 28, 2003 Lucrative poetry prize an all-woman affair Griffin short list includes two recipients of Order of Canada
by James Cowan
Order of Canada recipients P.K. Page and Margaret Avison are among the writers shortlisted for the 2003 Griffin Poetry Prize, the most lucrative poetry prize in the world.
March 27, 2003 Brand, Page and Avison shortlisted for Griffin award
Canadian poets Dionne Brand, P.K. Page and Margaret Avison are among this year’s nominees for the Griffin Poetry Prize.
Canadian poets P.K. Page, Dionne Brand, and Margaret Avison are this year’s three Canadian nominees for the Griffin Poetry Prize.
June 23, 2002 A Man of Few Vowels
by Judy Stoffman
Arts Reporter
For seven years, Christian Bök was sleep deprived. It took that many years of daily, or rather nightly, perseverance for the young Canadian poet to bring his remarkable work “Eunoia” to fruition.
June 2, 2002 Griffin wins poetry some attention Canadian victor is in demand after years of facing ‘indifference’
by Judy Stoffman
Entertainment Reporter
Toronto businessman Scott Griffin, who created the annual Griffin prizes for poetry three years ago, has already accomplished his aim of getting more people to appreciate this exhilarating genre.
May 31, 2002 Bök captures rich poetry prize Two Griffin winners walk away with $40,000 each
by Lauren Mechling
Ultra-experimental poet Christian Bök was crowned the winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize last night for his Eunoia, a book of poems in which each chapter is restricted to words of a single vowel.
May 31, 2002 Christian Bök wins Griffin Prize
Christian Bök was named the Canadian winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize Thursday for his book Eunoia. The prize, which awards $40,000 each to a Canadian and an international poet, was also given to American Alice Notley for Disobedience.
May 31, 2002 Bök wins rich poetry prize
Christian Bök has captured the Canadian portion of the Griffin Poetry Prize Thursday night for Eunoia, his book of experimental poetry in which every chapter is restricted to words of a single vowel … American Alice Notley took home the $40,000 International Griffin Prize for Disobedience.
May 31, 2002 Christian Bök wins $40,000 2002 Griffin Poetry Prize for Eunoia
by Anne-Marie Tobin (Canadian Press)
Christian Bök has won the Canadian portion of the Griffin Poetry Prize, worth $40,000, for his unusual book of poems called Eunoia, in which each chapter is restricted to words of a single vowel. The award was bestowed Thursday night at a dinner celebration that brought some of the country’s literary elite, including Michael Ondaatje and Margaret Atwood, together in a converted church in the city’s downtown … American Alice Notley was honoured with the $40,000 international Griffin prize – one of the richest in the world of poetry – for Disobedience.
May 30, 2002 Let the literary playoffs begin The Griffin is an exception – but most prizes need an overhaul
by Noah Richler
… The Griffin is a prize to be applauded – it brings attention to books we might otherwise have ignored, and, with its lucrative prize money (an almost insanely generous $40,000 in each of its Canadian and International categories), and makes further writing by good authors a more likely proposition.
May 30, 2002 A poet on the radar Karen Solie is nominated for tonight’s Griffin Prize for her first book of poetry, Short Haul Engine. She talks to Alexandra Gill about what drives her
by Alexandra Gill
Karen Solie sounds panicky. We’re on the phone trying to determine where to meet in Vancouver. The Victoria-based poet is worried about whether she’ll find her way around the city and where to park her truck. Is this the same poet whose Griffin Prize-nominated debut collection, Short Haul Engine, has been praised for its “ground-breaking” mastery of the Canadian road?
May 30, 2002 Other Griffin nominees
by Sandra Martin
Poetry may speak to the soul of a nation and its people, as venture capitalist Scott Griffin said when he announced the establishment of the Griffin Poetry Prize two years ago, but its nourishment comes from deep down in his own pockets. An internationalist, Griffin wants to celebrate the best of our homegrown talent and to expose it to wider competition. That’s why he has put more than $2-million of his own money into setting up the two $40,000 annual prizes – one for the best book of poetry published in Canada, and another for the best book published in English anywhere in the world in the previous calendar year.
March 22, 2002 Three Canadians vie for Griffin award ‘Innovative’ poetry recognized this year
by Gare Joyce
“The judges this year have recognized innovative and experimental works,” Coach House Books editor Darren Wershler-Henry said. “What this country and what poetry doesn’t need is another conservative prize. What they’ve done with the Griffin this year is a promising start.”
March 22, 2002 Griffin Prize short list announced
The Arts Report
The short list for this year’s Griffin Poetry Prize was unveiled Thursday during World Poetry Day celebrations at the National Library.
March 22, 2002 Griffin Prize short list announced at World Poetry Day readings in Ottawa
Canadian Press
World Poetry Day was celebrated with an evening of readings of poems from Canada and the European Union, and with the announcement Thursday of the Griffin Poetry Prize short list.
The $80,000 poetry prize is in its second year, and includes one international award and one Canadian prize. The short lists were announced at the National Library of Canada during festivities that included a reading of two poems from each of 15 participating countries.
March 22, 2002 Poet Bok on Griffin shortlist
by Sandra Martin
The unknown, the avant-garde and the established made the $40,000 Canadian shortlist for the second annual Griffin Poetry prizes … Poets from Puerto Rico, Britain, Australia and the United States made the finals for the $40,000 international Griffin prize.
March 21, 2002 Readings planned for World Poetry Day
Sandra Abma, The Arts Report
Thursday is World Poetry Day, a celebration established by the United Nations in 1999 and officially celebrated in Canada for the first time this year. Poetry readings are scheduled across the country, including a gala reading tonight at the National Library that will bring together poets from Canada and around the world. The National Library events also include the announcement of the Griffin Poetry Prize 2002 shortlist by Chairman Scott Griffin.
February 2, 2002 Who’s afraid of Anne Carson?
by Sandra Martin
The Canadian poet has won stacks of international prizes, writes Sandra Martin, but she has as many detractors as fans. All this tension is good for poetry …
Coetzee reviews recent translations of the work of Paul Celan, including the work of Griffin Prize winners Nikolai Popov and Heather McHugh on Glottal Stop: 101 Poems by Paul Celan.
June 18, 2001 Poetry in Motion A lucrative prize may train the public eye on the most ignored of arts
by John Bemrose
The crowd in the downtown Toronto nightclub was on its feet cheering. The man behind the microphone, 62-year-old industrialist Scott Griffin, attempted to escape the applause with shy ducks of his boyish mop of hair. He was there last week to announce that the evening belonged to the poets, beneficiaries of the Griffin Poetry Prize. But his audience of 300 wasn’t going to forgo the chance to thank the man whose generosity had given Canada its newest and most lucrative literary award.
June 16, 2001 Poets party hearty A marginalized art still manages to produce a first-class celebration
by Marni Jackson
The Griffin Poetry Prize, celebrated over two evenings last week, turned out to be the ideal complement to the Giller bash. The more glamorous Giller, like the fiction it honours, has plot, social intrigue and suspense. The faintly more bohemian Griffin – even though the combined $80,000 purse makes it the world’s largest poetry prize – was, like poetry, rich in words, images and a certain kamikaze spirit of risk. I kept thinking that the ghost of the unruly poet Milton Acorn was floating over the room, amused.
June 8, 2001 Anne Carson wins Griffin Poetry Prize
The Arts Report
CBC Radio
Anne Carson has become the first winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize. The award has been given to Carson for her poetry collection Men in the Off Hours.
June 11, 2001 It’s a good time to be Paul Celan The poet and poetry itself are celebrated at the Griffin Trust Awards
by Noah Richler
National Post
And the winner is … Paul Celan! … Célan won the gold in one [Griffin Poetry Prize] category, the Internationals, and scored a silver in the other – Anne Carson winning the Canadian section for Men in the Off Hours, but who also wrote an earlier tribute to Célan and another beloved forbearer, the Greek lyric poet Simonides.
June 8, 2001 Carson wins Griffin Poetry Prize, worth $40,000, at Toronto gala
by Ann-Marie Tobin
Canadian Press
A double-hit of one of the richest prizes for poetry was awarded Thursday night at a gathering that celebrated beautiful turns of phrase in the English language.
June 7, 2001 Battle of the bards Two poetry collections will earn $40,000 each tonight, courtesy of a lavish new prize.
by Michael Posner and Sandra Martin
A pair of Canada’s richest literary prizes will be handed out tonight for the first time to one of the country’s most overlooked artistic groups – poets. The inaugural edition of the annual Griffin Poetry Prize – which includes two separate awards of $40,000 each – will be announced at a gala ceremony in Toronto …
May 1, 2001 Poetry for prisoners: Griffin prize books to go to Corrections Canada
The Arts Report
CBC Radio
The trustees of The Griffin Poetry Prize have come up with a creative way to distribute the hundreds of books submitted for the award.
In the next few months, more than 1,000 volumes of poetry will be donated to prison libraries across Canada.
April 12, 2001 Griffin Prize founder not upset about leaked shortlist
The Arts Report
CBC Radio
The founder of the new Griffin Poetry Prize says he’s not concerned about the way the shortlist for the award was made public.
Scott Griffin had hoped to announce the list of nominees last night at a gala in Montreal. But the news was leaked to the media yesterday afternoon.
Griffin says the leak was unfortunate. But he believes it’s more important to focus on how the prize has raised the profile of poetry.
April 7, 2001 We are well-versed The times may seem prosaic, but in fact, it’s National Poetry Month and the form is blooming
by Sandra Martin
A Toronto venture capitalist named Scott Griffin had so much trouble imagining poetry as an essential component of our public and private lives that last June he put $2-million into a trust fund to establish two annual $40,000 prizes for the best book of poetry published in English in Canada and in the world respectively. “Poetry speaks to the soul of a nation and its people, and these days, at least in North America, it seems to me there is precious little that addresses the soul,” he said at a press conference announcing the Griffin Poetry Prize.
September 9, 2000 Poetry in motion
by Jaimie Hubbard
National Post
Scott Griffin has the soul of a poet and the pocketbook of an industrialist. The perfect combo to endow one of the world’s largest literary prizes …
A one-time Ottawa resident has endowed a new $80,000 poetry prize that will take its place among the richest literary awards in the world. Next June, two poets – one from Canada and one from another country – will each take home $40,000.
A Toronto businessman yesterday announced what is believed to be the largest international prize for poetry in the world, an $80,000 purse for those whom Percy Bysshe Shelley called the “unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
September 6, 2000 Canadian philanthropist endows $80,000 poetry prize
by Jennifer Keene
CBC Radio Arts
Canadian poets have a major new prize to call their own.
The Griffin Poetry Prize was launched this afternoon in Toronto. It is worth $80,000 annually. Scott Griffin, a businessman and philanthropist who lives in Toronto, is behind the prize.
Poetry in motion
Scott Griffin has the soul of a poet and the pocketbook of an industrialist. The perfect combo to endow one of the world’s largest literary prizes …
by Jaimie Hubbard National Post
Reprinted with permission
Scott Griffin and wife Krystyne:As a symbol for their adventurous life ahead, Griffin climbed out on to a gargoyle on Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, and from this precarious perch professed his love. Photograph: Horst Herget
The yellow and white Cessna 180, a diminutive plane even among the small planes flitting in and out of Toronto’s Island airport, taxis in from the runway on to the tarmac. As the plane approaches the terminal, the pilot executes a fast 90-degree turn, neatly whipping the plane’s tail to its final resting place.
It’s a show-offy move, the kind an 18-year-old in a Camaro might make on a city street. But the man who emerges from the cockpit is a 61-year-old Toronto businessman, and the newest hero in Canada’s literary firmament.
Scott Griffin surprised everyone this week when he announced the creation of the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry, one of the richest poetry prizes in the world. It is an astonishing sum — $80,000 annually — so much cash that a Maclean’s reporter called Griffin’s publicist to point out the typo on the invitation announcing the award. And for poetry, yet, certainly the least popular of the literary arts.
Finally, there was the question that most riveted the literary cognoscenti: Who the hell is Scott Griffin? Like Jack Rabinovitch was when he founded the Giller Prize for fiction six years ago, Griffin is, frankly, a nobody in literary circles. Until now. Now he is a very big somebody.
Scott GriffinPhotograph: Corey Wright
Twenty minutes later, sitting in the pilot’s lounge (he’s flown in from the family’s compound on Balsam Lake, two hours northeast of Toronto) Scott Griffin, in chinos, Topsiders and a pastel plaid shirt, looks like the scion of White Anglo Toronto he is. He is a compact man, about five feet nine, who occasionally sweeps his hair back in a gesture reminiscent of Hugh Grant. His long hair is streaked with grey, and he badly needs a haircut, not the image of the millionaire businessman most of us have. But he is a businessman (he struck it rich as a venture capitalist and is today owner of a highly sophisticated shock-absorber concern). And like any good businessman, he stays very much “on message.” And the message today is to talk about the Griffin Trust. And, more personally, his deep and abiding love of poetry.
It began with his father, Griffin explains. “Whenever we did some kind of misdemeanor, my father would use poetry as a punishment. We had to learn a poem — one of our choice — and then recite it that evening in front of the family.” For many kids, that would have killed any incipient interest in the subject. Not Griffin. “It made us fall in love with poetry. I believe that you don’t truly understand a poem until you’ve memorized it.”
Griffin’s $80,000 will be divided into two prizes, one for a Canadian poet, one for an international poet, both writing in English. The only poetry prize larger than the Griffin is the Tanning Prize, worth US$100,000, a lifetime achievement award given to an American poet. The Griffin rewards working poets regardless of nationality, and a publisher can submit up to three books published within that year.
Griffin thought about creating a poetry prize for a long time, although, he notes wryly, “there wasn’t a Saul at the crossroads” moment. By last January though, he was ready to try it out on others. He and his wife, Krystyne, invited novelist Michael Ondaatje and playwright David Young on Jan. 21 to a dinner party at their Rosedale house, an exotic environment of Turkish carpets, aubergine walls and lacquered ceilings.
“Scott took us aside, into the living room, and tried the idea out,” Young recalls. “We were just blown away. It was as thrilling a moment as I’ve had in my life. He said, ‘Don’t tell anyone about it, and we need to talk.’ ”
Plans proceeded quickly. Ondaatje and Young lined up a group of credible trustees: Margaret Atwood, former U.S. poet laureate Robert Haas and renowned British poet Robin Robertson.
Setting up a major literary award in seven months is a huge undertaking, but Griffin has that kind of energy and speed. Even as a kid, he concedes, he was hyperactive. “Today, he’d probably have been put on Ritalin,” laughs his younger brother Tim. Then, the solution was to ship him off to Sedbergh, a boarding school north of Montebello in Quebec. “It was the best thing for me,” Griffin acknowledges. “There were only 59 boys there. You skied out to huts on the weekend and you were on your own, you had to cook for yourself and make your own fires. It was exactly the sort of thing I needed. And I loved it.”
The spartan school further fostered Griffin’s interest in poetry. “[The school] was run by an Englishman, a sort of Victorian Mr. Chips,” Griffin recalls. “But he had a tremendous love of poetry. He would come into a class and would read out a long poem and suddenly slam the desk and say, ‘Listen to this! Listen!’ and he would recite it with tremendous emphasis. It captured your imagination. Here was somebody who was a rather formidable figure to a young boy, reciting poetry.”
Later, at Bishop’s University in Sherbrooke, Que., the attraction to poetry was cemented by Arthur Moyter, his English professor. “He was a very sensitive person, the exact opposite of our headmaster. He was very emotional. He adored poetry. He held a course where there were only five of us. And afterwards he would sit down and write us a letter about the points we had made or not made, and we would reply in a letter. It was quite a unique experience. So that really laid a pretty firm ground.”
Scott Griffin was spawned in a rarified Upper-Canadian gene pool. His great-grandfather was Sir William MacKenzie, who made much of his fortune building railways and, as Griffin offhandedly wrote in a recent e-mail, “owned TTC, Ont. Hydro … etc.” That “etc.” covers a lot of unspoken assumptions about wealth. His father, Tony, was the youngest captain in the Canadian navy during the Second World War, and later joined the Lester Pearson-run external affairs department before founding his own investment firm. Griffin’s mother, Kitty, was sister to Walter Gordon, the federal finance minister in the Pearson government.
It’s all vaguely Kennedyesque. It is a large, toothsome, athletic, outdoorsy, Catholic clan, which regularly gathers for family events at the Balsam Lake compound. The original estate, which came to encompass seven summer homes, a garage, an ice house and a riding stable, was built by Sir William, who acquired a mile of shoreline early in his career, and who built a private branch of his railroad to reach it. And, like the Kennedys, they’re a competitive bunch. The eldest of five, Griffin has three brothers. There’s Ian, a Calgary stockbroker, Peter, a high-school principal, and Tim, the former head of RT Capital. And sister Anne is an artist. Even today, they regularly battle it out on the tennis court, or on the lake.
“When you go up to the cottage they all want to slaughter you at tennis,” says long-time family friend and art collector Bruce Bailey. And if they’re not trying to wallop you on the court, they find more imaginative ways to do it. “They play a game called Ball on the Roof: everyone divides into teams and tries to hit the ball over the roof of the main house. I prefer a gin and tonic on the dock with Scott’s wife, Krystyne.”
You cannot write about Griffin and not mention Krystyne, his second wife. (A first marriage produced three children; Scott and Krystyne have a daughter.) Krystyne Griffin is a powerhouse in her own right, the doyenne of the Canadian fashion industry. Tall, aristocratic, “she gives Scott sanction,” says one close friend, alluding to his appetite for living adventurously. She knew this early on: In the mid-’70s, Griffin climbed out on to a gargoyle on Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, and from his precarious perch told her he loved her.
“It’s the marriage which has allowed him to move forward, to achieve his success,” observes Bailey. “She’s rock solid. They are the sort of people who, if they lost everything financially, could be quite happy sleeping in a tent — if they were together.” She is his Rose, Jackie and Ethel all rolled into one.
Of course, you can’t stretch the Kennedy analogy too far. Griffin does share, though, a sense of public service. “I believe you have to return some of your winnings back to society some way or other. And I think it’s always better to put it back into things that are of interest to you. So, poetry was a bit of a natural.”
Despite the deep establishment roots, Griffin is a self-made millionaire. Since his great-grandfather MacKenzie lost most of his fortune in the ’20s, and since his parents are still alive, there have been no lavish inheritances.
So after Bishops, where he got his degree in English and philosophy, Griffin went to work. He started his career in the mailroom at British Petroleum, eventually working his way up to a marketing job. He got seconded to the company’s London office, returned to Montreal to run one of the Pop Shoppe franchises, then bounced to Toronto, where he formed a venture capital firm, Meridian Technology, with Bruce Westwood, who is now a literary agent.
“[Meridian] wandered about in the desert exploring solar energy, satellite television, computers and software,” Griffin says, “and eventually settled on manufacturing — magnesium die-casting for the automotive industry.” When that company — it eventually became the largest consumer of magnesium ingots in the world — was bought by Fiat, Griffin bought Meridian’s shock-absorber subsidiary. He built that firm up, as he says, “from a very small company to a very profitable company” that specializes in sophisticated shock absorbers for high-speed rail and buildings designed to withstand earthquakes. So, poets can say a little prayer of thanks every time they see a bullet train; it is directly responsible for the Griffin Prize.
“There’s something wonderfully perverse,” Griffin says with a laugh, “about translating shock absorbers into poetry. It amuses a funny bone way back there, that all this machinery for the auto industry is making its way into poetry.”
In an earlier age, Griffin would have been an adventurer, not a businessman. Perhaps he’d have carved a better-than-successful living as a pirate or from exploring remotest Africa, or from trading with natives on the South China Sea. But the real thrill would have been the journey.
But since the call for explorer-adventurers is limited these days, Griffin satisfies this taste elsewhere. As a member of the board of directors for the Canadian Executive Services Overseas, for example, he has overseen projects in Romania and Africa. He’s also a director of the African Medical and Research Foundation, and spent 18 months in Africa reorganizing its flying-doctors service.
He even took his own plane over, flying from St. John’s to the Azores over the course of 14 hours. The Azores are a mere speck on the map, and it’s hard to imagine trying to find them after flying for 14 hours in a teeny Cessna. “You don’t have a lot of room for error,” Griffin says, aware of the understatement. “If you get to the 13 1/2 hour mark and can’t pick up the signal, you have two choices: turn left or right and hope you’ve picked correctly. You’ve got another nine or 10 hours flying to get to Portugal or Africa and you haven’t got that fuel, so you go down.”
Not your average poetry-loving aesthete.
“He’s a little high-strung, maybe energetic is a better way to describe it,” says brother Tim. “Very competitive, but then so am I, so we get along really well. He has always been a little hyper … there is a cliff-hanger side to him.
“This prize, though, is also a little risky,” he adds thoughtfully. “It involves a lot of money and though he’s done well, he’s no Bill Gates or Ken Thomson. And there are risks associated with how it will be perceived, whether it will generate controversy, whether it will achieve what he wants it to achieve.”
Griffin is well aware he won’t accomplish everything he wants to do in the first year. But he will have done something few other benefactors have achieved: opened the Canadian scene up to the world by making his prize international.
“I think it’s very important to make it international,” Griffin says, “because it will bring Canadian poets into the international arena and vice versa. I think a lot of Canadian prizes are parochial in the sense that they are very important in the Canadian scene, but they don’t lift Canadians out into the international scene.”
And once he’s done that?
“Well,” he adds with a laugh, “if shock absorbers keep selling, who knows?”
Photo credits: Horst Herget, Corey Wright, National Post
New poetry award among literature’s most lucrative
Griffin Poetry Prize “makes a statement” by eclipsing Giller, G-G’s awards
by Joanne laucius and Steven Mazey Ottawa Citizen
Reprinted with permission
Scott Griffin hopes his $80,000 poetry prize will give poets the kind of profile enjoyed by novelists. Photograph: Kevin Van Paassen
A one-time Ottawa resident has endowed a new $80,000 poetry prize that will take its place among the richest literary awards in the world.
Next June, two poets — one from Canada and one from another country — will each take home $40,000.
“We wanted to lift the profile of poets. Some of our best novelists were first poets,” said Scott Griffin, 61, a Toronto businessman, adventurer and philanthropist. He hopes the award will inspire poets and the public alike and give poetry the kind of profile enjoyed by novels.
“I think it is important to support that which is of interest to you,” he said. “It becomes more meaningful and it tends to have a greater reach.”
The annual award will certainly be Canada’s richest literary prize, eclipsing the $25,000 Giller Award for fiction and the annual Governor-General’s Literary awards, worth $10,000 each, including a category for poetry.
“We felt that the award had to be of sufficient size that it would make a statement,” said Mr. Griffin. “That poets and poetry were just as important as novelists and their work.”
Mr. Griffin stepped down about five years ago as CEO of Meridian Technologies Inc. The company he founded in 1978 held a portfolio ranging from computers to the world’s largest producer of magnesium die-cast auto parts.
He has since become the majority shareholder of General Kinetics Engineering Corporation, which produces automotive parts and shock absorbers for military clients.
Mr. Griffin has spent much of his life in the world of money, but poetry has stuck with him, despite that fact that he admits his own poems have never gone beyond schoolboy scribbles.
“The great poets speak to us about the soul and what it means to be human,” he said.
Born in Hamilton, Mr. Griffin grew up around Ottawa in the 1950s, attending Rockcliffe Park Public School, just around the corner from the family’s home. His father, Tony, worked at External Affairs under Lester Pearson.
“My father’s perverse idea of punishment for some minor misdemeanour was to have us memorize poetry and recite it that evening. This not only introduced us to poetry but it gave us a real appreciation for it. It became a family tradition to read poetry aloud around the fire at the Griffin cottage.”
Later, Mr. Griffin attended the private Sedburgh School near Montebello and Bishop’s University, where he studied English and philosophy.
He was inspired by poetry professor Arthur Motyer’s passion and entranced by poetry from the Romantics to e.e. cummings.
Yesterday, Mr. Motyer recalled Mr. Griffin as a bright young man with a lot of fair hair.
“He was not an intellectual person, but he was very bright and very interested,” said Mr. Motyer, who believes that Mr. Griffin will give the prize significant profile.
“It’s not just the money, but that someone like Scott with a business background says it’s important. It’s a recognition of the importance of poetry in our lives,” he said.
Mr. Griffin’s first job was at British Petroleum, where he stayed for a decade before working for a Montreal venture-capital firm, where he learned about running plants and cash flow.
He decided he could do it on his own, and founded Meridian.
“Life is curious on the number of routes you can take to where you’re going to go,” said Mr. Griffin.
When he quit Meridian, he took his “single-engine putt-putt,” a 1974 Cessna 180, and flew across the Atlantic to Africa, where once before he had driven a Land Rover from Kenya to Uganda.
He spent 18 months volunteering to fly serious medical cases from all over East Africa to treatment in Nairobi for the African Medical and Research Foundation, joined by his wife, Krystyne, a jewelry designer.
“I wanted to have some kind of a purpose. I had made a little bit of money after Meridian. I felt I had to do something different,” says Mr. Griffin.
The father of four and grandfather of six has also volunteered to reorganize a bottling plant in Romania to help generate jobs.
Back in Toronto, he decided to use a little more money for the cause of Canadian poetry.
The idea was hatched last January over a bottle or two of wine with his friend Michael Ondaatje, the author of the bestselling novel The English Patient.
“I had this idea. We were at dinner and they said, ‘This has gotta happen.’ There was so much enthusiasm. Then we talked to Margaret Atwood. And she said, ‘This has gotta happen.’ ” Mr. Griffin said.
Mr. Ondaatje has been named as one of the trustees of the award along with Ms. Atwood and David Young, U.S. poet laureate Robert Hass and poet and publisher Robin Robertson.
Ms. Atwood cheered Mr. Griffin’s initiative in a statement.
“I am very pleased to have been able to help with the inception of this important prize. Poetry is at the heart of language; it’s good to see it given the recognition it deserves.”
In connection with the prize, the University of Toronto’s Massey College will arrange a two-month “poet in residence” program for the award’s winning poets.
The Griffin Trust will help publishers and booksellers to promote the short-listed poets through marketing and advertising.
A panel of three judges will be chosen annually by the trustees.
The short-listed finalists will be announced in April and finalists will be invited to Toronto to give public readings. The prizes will be announced at a gala dinner in June.
Veteran Ottawa poet Christopher Levenson, a former professor of English at Carleton University, said such a prize will help raise awareness of poets and poetry.
“I’m delighted. This is terrific news. That kind of money will certainly make people look up. In the short run, something like this is more needed than a poet laureate.”
To be eligible, a book of poems must be printed in English in a print run of no fewer than 500 copies.
Submissions must originate from the publishers. Application details can be found on the Web site www.griffinpoetryprize.com.
Award-Winning Poetry
An example of recent award-winning Canadian poetry:
On Reincarnation for Susanne by Elizabeth Brewster won the 1999 Confederation Poet’s prize, awarded to the best poem published in Arc: Canada’s National Poetry Magazine.
On Reincarnation
for Susanne
I don’t think it’s probable
(after all, there must have been so few humans
back when we began —
came out of Africa
or wherever it was we came from —
to go around
for all our new bodies
unless we are born again from shellfish,
mosquitos or dinosaurs.)
Still, like you, I wish it could be true.
I had rather have another human life
with all its aches and angers,
doubts and disappointments
than some ethereal glimmer
fading to starlight
or more substantial possession
of crowns and golden slippers.
Maybe in another life
I would be lucky in love,
write a great poem,
and become a passable cook,
even a good cook of kosher foods.
And reincarnation could prove God’s justice
or sense of humour.
Perhaps saints would become sinners
and sinners become saints
so that they would understand one another.
Perhaps Charles the First is now a revolutionary
and Napoleon a pacifist.
Perhaps Hitler has been born Jewish
to parents who were survivors,
a purgatorial education for him.
It’s a game to play,
serial lives
or visions of eternity
but somewhere I heard or read,
“Better one good hour
in this present world
than a whole life
of the World to Come.”
Better the rain that falls
and briefly blesses everyone
than perpetual light.
Death, 1934, by Ottawa’s Stephanie Bolster, was included in White Stone: The Alice Poems, which won the 1998 Governor-General’s Prize for Poetry.
Death, 1934
Sad, how small, tenacious,
grey you’ve become.
What was that mouse
slipped under the door?
The world over, we will try
to catch her into cages, snap
her veterbrae with metal,
wring her guts with poison
and fail. The papers will say
Alice in Wonderland
has passed away,
as though you were
that Alice and gone.
From A Broken Bowl by Patrick Friessen, a book of untitled poems shortlisted for the 1997 Governor-General’s Award and winner of the ’97 Manitoba Book of the Year Award.
by Finbarr O’Reilly National Post
Reprinted with permission
A Toronto businessman yesterday announced what is believed to be the largest international prize for poetry in the world, an $80,000 purse for those whom Percy Bysshe Shelley called the “unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
And part of the reason for the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry, to be awarded each year for the best Canadian book of poetry and the best international book of poetry in English, is to raise the profile of poets, the founder of the award said.
“Ever since I started talking about this award, I’ve been asked the same questions: Where did this idea come from and why poetry?” said Scott Griffin, the 61-year-old head of a company that makes auto parts. “The fact that these questions can even be asked represents just how far poetry has slipped from our consciousness.”
Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje were among the writers and poets at the University of Toronto yesterday to celebrate the launch of the prize, to be split between the Canadian and international categories.
In addition to the prizes, the winners will be awarded a two-month poet-in-residence program at the University of Toronto’s Massey College, where the launch was held yesterday under the shade of maple trees.
“What Scott wants to do is raise the profile, not just of the prize, but of poets as well,” said Ms. Atwood in an interview. “He will put money into promoting poets and their books and poetry overall will get a lift.”
The award is among the world’s largest poetry prizes for individual works. Most major poetry prizes such as the US$100,000 Tanning Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature, worth almost US$1-million, are awarded for a writer’s entire body of work.
Only the US$75,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, given for a book of poetry by a mid-career poet, is worth more than the Griffin Trust. And that is open only to American poets.
The Griffin Trust is worth substantially more than the Giller Prize which, until yesterday, was Canada’s most lucrative literary award. The Giller gives $25,000 for excellence in creative writing.
Afterward, Mr. Griffin played down the size of the award.
“Yes, we sort of knew that, but we wanted it to be about more than the numbers,” he said. “Poetry speaks to the soul of a nation and its people and it seems to me that there’s little that speaks to our soul in today’s society. Poetry is too often relegated to the bottom of the cultural heap.”
The two prizes will be awarded annually to living writers for collections of poetry published the preceding year. Submission is by publishers only and each publisher may submit a maximum of three books. Qualified judges will be selected annually by the trustees and the prizes will be awarded in the spring. (Full details are available at www.griffinpoetryprize.com).
Ms. Atwood, Mr. Ondaatje, playwright David Young, and Mr. Griffin are all trustees, along with Robert Hass, the former United States poet laureate, and British poet Robin Robertson. None of the trustees will be entering the competition.
