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.
“It's a total surprise. You know that there are three people and one is going to win but nevertheless...I'm still shaking, I'm still trying to get my knees to calm down.”
In her speech, Simpson thanked her publisher McClelland & Stewart, her editor Don McKay and her family.
Simpson left the audience with this profundity: “Mandelstam did say ‘poetry shakes us awake from the middle of a word' and that is so powerful. So when you think about that, you think that's what poetry is all about, it shakes us awake and makes us more aware.”
Simpson's second collection of poetry, meditative lyric poems illuminating emotional states, was selected by the jury over Di Brandt's Now You Care and Leslie Greentree's go-go dancing for Elvis.
In their praise for Loop, the jury, consisting of former U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins, former New Zealand poet laureate Bill Manhire and Canada's own Governor-General's award-winning poet, Phyllis Webb, released this comment about Simpson's work: “A troubled and generous spirit pervades and inspired Simpson's achievement of craft and lyric in these poems.”
In an International category dominated by American finalists, two from the same publisher, Louisiana State University Press, August Kleinzahler won the $40,000 prize for his work The Strange Hours Travellers Keep.
The other books shortlisted for the International prize were Suji Kwock Kim's Notes From the Divided Country, David Kirby's The Ha-Ha and Louis Simpson's The Owner of the House.
Established by entrepreneur Scott Griffin in 2000, the Griffin Poetry Prize is quickly becoming one of the world's most prestigious awards for the oft-neglected art form. This year saw a record-breaking number of entries, with 423 submissions from 15 countries, nearly 100 more books than the previous year.
