Toronto, July 26, 2001 – Distinguished poets Dionne Brand, Robert Creeley and Michael Hofmann will judge entries from around the world for The Griffin Poetry Prize 2002, it was announced today by Scott Griffin, Chairman of The Griffin Trust.
The judges are selected annually by the trustees: Margaret Atwood, Robert Hass, Michael Ondaatje, Robin Robertson and David Young. Brand, Creeley and Hofmann will be judging books of poetry published in the calendar year 2001. The shortlist will be announced in April, 2002 and The Griffin Poetry Prize, worth $80,000, divided between the International and Canadian winners, will be presented in May, 2002.
Dionne Brand is a Canadian poet, novelist and essayist living in Toronto. Her seven volumes of poetry include Land To Light On that won the Governor-General’s Award for Poetry and the Trillium Award for Literature in 1997. Her fiction includes the acclaimed novels In Another Place, Not Here, Sans Souci and Other Stories and her most recent, At the Full and Change of the Moon. Her works of non-fiction include No Burden To Carry: Narratives of Black Working Women in Ontario 1920s to 1950s, a collection of oral histories; and Bread Out Of Stone, a book of essays. Her latest non-fiction book, A Map to the Door of No Return, is being published by Doubleday Canada in September. Brand is the Ruth Wynn Woodward Professor in Women’s Studies at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia.
American poet Robert Creeley has published more than 60 books of poetry in the United States and abroad in addition to more than a dozen books of prose. Among his many collections are For Love, Pieces, Windows and Selected Poems. He has written a significant body of prose including the novel The Island, and a collection of stories, The Gold Diggers. During the ’50s he taught at Black Mountain College and edited The Black Mountain Review. He currently teaches at the State University of New York at Buffalo, N.Y. Creeley was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 1999 and served as New York State Poet from 1989 to 1991. Among his other honors are the Frost Medal, Guggenheim fellowships, the Shelley Memorial Award, and grants from the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Michael Hofmann was born in Germany, was educated in Britain and now lives in London. His new collection of poetry, Approximately Nowhere, was published in 1999. His book of essays on poetry and fiction called Behind the Lines has just been published by Faber and Faber, which also published his earlier volumes of poetry, Nights in the Iron Hotel, Acrimony and Corona, Corona. Hofmann has translated more than a dozen works from German and in the process won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the PEN/Book of the Month Club Translation Prize, and has twice shared the Schlegel-Tieck Prize. He also teaches at the University of Florida in Gainesville.
The inaugural Griffin Poetry Prize was awarded in June, 2001 with Nikolai Popov and Heather McHugh’s translation of Glottal Stop: 101 Poems by Paul Celan winning the International Prize and Anne Carson’s Men in the Off Hours winning the Canadian prize. To celebrate the event, Toronto’s House of Anansi Press published The Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology, containing selections from the International and Canadian shortlist.
The $80,000 Griffin Poetry Prize includes two literary awards for excellence in English poetry, divided between a living Canadian poet/translator and a living poet/translator from anywhere in the world. The prizes are awarded annually for collections of poetry published in English during the preceding year. The Griffin Trust For Excellence In Poetry was founded in September, 2000.
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For more information, contact:
Prudence Emery, Publicity Director
Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry
Telephone: (905) 565-5993
E-mail: press@griffinpoetryprize.com
Downloadable versions of judges’ pictures are available upon request.