THE GRIFFIN TRUST For Excellence In Poetry Trustees: Press Release Margaret Atwood Scott Griffin Robert Hass Michael Ondaatje THE C$80,000 GRIFFIN POETRY PRIZE ANNOUNCES CANADIAN AND INTERNATIONAL SHORTLIST FOR 2003 Robin Robertson David Young TORONTO, March 27th — The Griffin Poetry Prize shortlist for 2003 was announced today by Scott Griffin, Chairman of The Griffin Trust. The C$80,000 Griffin Poetry Prize is the most generous international poetry prize for a single volume of poetry, and is awarded annually for the two best books of poetry published in English the previous year anywhere in the world. The seven shortlisted nominees are divided into three Canadian and four International. The Canadian Shortlist Concrete and Wild Carrot • Margaret Avison Brick Books thirsty • Dionne Brand McClelland & Stewart Ltd. Planet Earth: Poems Selected and New • P.K. Page The Porcupine’s Quill, Inc. The International Shortlist Mr. and Mrs. Scotland are Dead: Poems 1980-1994 • Kathleen Jamie Bloodaxe Books Moy sand and gravel • Paul Muldoon Farrar, Straus & Giroux American Sonnets: Poems • Gerald Stern W.W. Norton and Company Steal Away: Selected and New Poems • C.D. Wright Copper Canyon Press The shortlisted poets will be invited to give a reading in Toronto at a Harbourfront Reading Series Special event on June 11th and the two winners, who each receive C$40,000 will be announced at the third Griffin Poetry Prize awards on June 12th. THE GRIFFIN TRUST For Excellence In Poetry The judges for 2003 are the distinguished poets Michael Longley (Northern Ireland), Sharon Olds (U.S.) and Sharon Thesen (Canada). The Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology, a selection of poems from the 2003 shortlisted books, edited by Sharon Thesen and published by Toronto’s House of Anansi Press, will be available in June. Benefactor Scott Griffin launched The Griffin Prize in September, 2000 with the support of the Trustees Margaret Atwood, Robert Hass, Michael Ondaatje, Robin Robertson and David Young. Based in Toronto, Canada, The Griffin Prize was created to serve and encourage excellence in poetry written in English anywhere in the world. Eligible collections of poetry, which includes translations, must be submitted by publishers in the calendar year of their publication. - 30 - NOTE: The publishers mentioned in our release are those who submitted the books. NOTE TO BOOKSELLERS: Griffin Poetry Prize Shortlist bookmarks and stickers are supplied free of charge by The Griffin Trust. To access the order form, visit our Web site, at http://www.griffinpoetryprize.com/gpp2003-form.html. Winner stickers will be available after June 12th. Please direct other inquiries as follows: General Inquiries: Press and Publicity: Ruth Smith, Manager Prudence Emery, Publicity Director Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected] Links: Submitting Publishers’ Web sites: Bloodaxe Books - http://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ Farrar, Straus & Giroux - http://www.fsgbooks.com/ W.W. Norton & Company - http://www.wwnorton.com/ Copper Canyon Press - http://www.coppercanyonpress.org/ Brick Books - http://www.brickbooks.ca/ McClelland & Stewart Ltd. - http://www.mcclelland.com/ The Porcupine's Quill, Inc. - http://www.sentex.net/~pql/ Marketing Collateral http://www.griffinpoetryprize.com/gpp2003-form.html Downloadable photographs of 2003 shortlisted poets http://www.griffinpoetryprize.com/pictures.html THE GRIFFIN TRUST For Excellence In Poetry THE 2003 GRIFFIN POETRY PRIZE SHORTLIST CITATIONS AND BIOGRAPHIES The Canadian Shortlist Book: Concrete & Wild Carrot Poet: Margaret Avison Publisher: Brick Books Citation: “If beauty, as Alfred North Whitehead defines it, is “a quality which finds its exemplification in actual occasions,” and if beauty is more completely exemplified in “imperfection and discord” than in the “perfection of harmony,” then Margaret Avison’s Concrete and Wild Carrot is an occasion of beauty. Avison’s poetry is also alive in its sublimity and its humility: “wonder, readiness, simplicity” – the gifts of perception Avison attributes to her Christian faith – imbue every poem in this book with a rare spirit of disorderly love. Margaret Avison is a national treasure. For many decades she has forged a way to write, against the grain, some of the most humane, sweet and profound poetry of our time.” Biography: Margaret Avison was born in 1918 in Galt, Ontario, raised in Regina, Calgary and Toronto, where she completed high school in 1936. She continued her studies at University of Toronto earning a B.A. in 1940 and an M.A. in 1963. Her work has been recognized with two Governor General’s Awards for Poetry (Winter and Sun and No Time), by three honorary doctorates and by an officership in the Order of Canada. One of the poems in Concrete and Wild Carrot (“Prospecting,” retitled from “An-astronomy”) was awarded first place in the category of the Canadian Church Press Awards for 2000. Her other publications include The Dumbfounding, sunblue, Selected Poems, A Kind of Perseverance (prose) and Not Yet Still. The 2003 Griffin Poetry Prize Shortlist Citations and Biographies 1 THE GRIFFIN TRUST For Excellence In Poetry Book: thirsty Poet: Dionne Brand Publisher: McClelland & Stewart Ltd. Citation: “The word ‘thirsty’ in Dionne Brand’s long poem is a dying man’s last utterance. Shot by the police in his own front yard, Alan is a Christie Pits Jeremiah as well as a tender nurturer of plants, an immigrant and a dreamer who thirsts for “a calming loving spot” among the “conditional places” and “conditional sentences” that perpetuate the marginalisation of the poor. Thirsty is a reckoning with the pretenses of community in the soul-withering environments of today’s mega-cities. But Brand’s luscious and ferocious lines go beyond a critique of dystopian realities to construct, in themselves, in their keen, lyric intelligence, an oasis of truth, compassion, and sensuality.” Biography: Dionne Brand won the Governor-General’s Award for Poetry and the Trillium Award for Literature in 1997 for A Land to Light On, her seventh book of poetry. Her fiction includes the acclaimed novels In Another Place Not Here and At the Full Change of the Moon as well as Sans Souci and Other Stories. Her most recent non- fiction book, A Map to the Door of No Return, was published by Doubleday Canada. Her Griffin-shortlisted book of poetry, thirsty, is also nominated for the Trillium Book Award. In addition to her literary accomplishments, Trinidad-born Brand has directed four documentary films for the National Film Board of Canada, focusing on Black women artists and activists. Brand lectures at Toronto’s York University and at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C. The 2003 Griffin Poetry Prize Shortlist Citations and Biographies 2 THE GRIFFIN TRUST For Excellence In Poetry Book: Planet Earth: Poems Selected and New Poet: P.K. Page Publisher: The Porcupine’s Quill, Inc Citation: “Elegant, rigorous, fresh, P.K. Page’s work sings with a voice of independent character and maenad conjecture. It is a creature that lives on its own terms and terrain. It is startling, authoritative, and anti-sentimental, able to bear cool as well as passionate gazing at our own species. Her poems are always thinking – each line is thinking, while its six senses remain impeccably alert. Her poems live by wit, wisdom, sass, suspense and a muscular lissome synapse and diction. They are daring in scope, meticulous in accomplishment, and boldly moral – with a lovely flavour of amoral verve! We fall under the charm of her reasoning, of her fecund, fastidious imagination, of her many musics, and of her necessariness to us, her essentialness.” Biography: P.K. Page has written some of the best poems published in Canada over the last five decades. In addition to winning the Governor General’s Award for Poetry in 1957, she was appointed a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1999. She is the author of more than a dozen books, including ten volumes of poetry, a novel, selected short stories, three books for children and a memoir, entitled Brazilian Journal, based on her extended stay in Brazil with her late husband Arthur Irwin, who served as the Canadian Ambassador there from 1957 –1959. A two-volume edition of Page’s collected poems, The Hidden Room (P Q L), was published in 1997. Born in England and brought up on the Canadian prairies, Page resides in Victoria, British Columbia. The 2003 Griffin Poetry Prize Shortlist Citations and Biographies 3 THE GRIFFIN TRUST For Excellence In Poetry The International Shortlist Book: Mr. And Mrs Scotland are Dead: Poems 1980-1994 Poet: Kathleen Jamie Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Citation: “Kathleen Jamie appraises her roots while keeping an eye on far horizons. While there is of course much that is quintessentially Scottish in her poetry, her generous, transfiguring imagination takes in the world - Pakistan, Tibet, the Middle East as well as beloved native landscapes such as Orkney and Tayside. These poems are fleet in their chronicling and abundant in circumstantial detail, but also interior, spiritually entangled. Her humane vision brings to life the dangers of wartime and the peace of home. The edgy amorousness in some of the poems is matched by a chaste utterance that intensifies the erotic charge. She has perfect pitch, a natural sense of cadence and verbal melody that helps to give her work the feel of organic inevitability: her poems make their shapes as a fountain does (and the Jamie fountain is fed by pure spring-water). The lovely surface-shimmer of her poetry beguiles us just as its inner radiance ensures that we will keep returning to it.” Biography: Kathleen Jamie was born in the West of Scotland in 1962. She has received several prestigious awards for her poetry, including the Somerset Maughan Award, a Forward Prize, and a Creative Scotland Award. She has twice won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize.