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Griffin Poetry Prize 2021

The annual Griffin Poetry Prize awards two prizes: a Canadian prize is given to a living poet resident in Canada, and an international prize is given to a living poet from any country in the world. NNELS production focuses on the Canadian titles. Learn more about the award from the Griffin Poetry Prize website.

  • Author:
    Mort, Valzhyna
    Summary:

    In her book of letters to the dead, the prize-winning poet Valzhyna Mort relearns how to mourn those erased by violent history. With shocking, unforgettable lyric force, Valzhyna Mort's Music for the Dead and Resurrected confronts...

  • Author:
    Lei, Yi.
    Summary:

    Yi Lei published her poem "A Single Woman's Bedroom" in 1987, when cohabitation before marriage was a punishable crime in China. She was met with major critical acclaim―and with outrage―for her frank embrace of women...

  • Author:
    Chang, Victoria
    Summary:

    After her mother died, poet Victoria Chang refused to write elegies. Rather, she distilled her grief during a feverish two weeks by writing scores of poetic obituaries for all she lost in the world. InObit, Chang writes of "the way...

  • Author:
    Saadi, Yusuf
    Summary:

    Pluviophile veers through various poetic visions and traditions in search of the sacred within and beyond language. Its poems continually revitalize form, imagery and sonancy to reconsider the ways we value language, beauty and body....

  • Author:
    Lubrin, Canisia
    Summary:

    The Dyzgraphxst presents seven inquiries into selfhood through the perennial figure Jejune. Polyvocal in register, the book moves to mine meanings of kinship through the wide and intimate reach of language across geographies and...

  • Author:
    Reddy, Srikanth
    Summary:

    Simultaneously funny and frightful, Srikanth Reddy's Underworld Lit is a multiverse quest through various cultures' realms of the dead. Couched in a literature professor's daily mishaps with family life and his sudden...

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