Vancouver poet and translator George McWhirter makes shortlist for $130K Griffin Poetry Prize

Canadian translator George McWhirter has made the shortlist for the Griffin Poetry Prize. He is recognized for Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence, which was translated from Spanish and written by Mexican poet Homero Aridjis.

The $130,000 prize is the world's largest prize for a single book of poetry written in or translated into English.

• The CBC Poetry Prize is open from April 1 to June 1

Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence is a poetry collection that reflects on the past and looks to the future. It describes meetings with mythical animals, family ghosts, writers and Mexico's oppressed to work toward spiritual transformation.

McWhirter is a Vancouver-based poet and translator. His poetry is anthologized in The Penguin Book of Canadian Verse and Irish Writing in the Twentieth Century and he shared the first Commonwealth Poetry Prize with Chinua Achebe in 1972 for Catalan Poems. Mexican writer Aridjis is the author of 51 books of poetry and prose. He is the President Emeritus of PEN International and has won many important literary prizes.  

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The 2024 jury is comprised of Canadian poet A.F. Moritz, German poet Jan Wagner and American poet Anne Waldman. They read 592 books, submitted by 235 publishers from 14 different countries.

"Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence brings poet-translator George McWhirter's adept English to the service of a great world-poet, Homero Aridjis," said the jury in a press statement. 

"The book's enchanting variety of tones and subjects expresses a rounded human being engaged with our total experience, from the familial to the political, from bodily sensations to dream, vision, philosophic thought, and history, from hope to foreboding. A keynote is the sense of a person speaking with us plainly and yet from kinship with a light that bathes, and springs from, each thing."

The complete shortlist includes:

• A Crash Course in Molotov Cocktails by Halyna Kruk, translated from Ukrainian by Amelia M. Glaser and Yuliya Ilchuk 
• To 2040 by Jorie Graham
• School of Instructions by Ishion Hutchinson
• Door by Ann Lauterbach
• Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence by Homero Aridjis, translated from Spanish by George McWhirter

The winners of the Griffin Poetry Prize will be announced on June 5 at Koerner Hall in Toronto. The Koerner Hall event will also feature readings from all the finalists before the big reveal.

The remaining shortlisted writers will each receive $10,000.

In the event a winning book is a translation into English, the Griffin Poetry Prize will allocate 60 per cent of the prize to the translator and 40 per cent to the original poet. 

A $10,000 prize will also be awarded for a Canadian first book of poetry. The award is a six-week residency in Italy in partnership with the Civitella Ranieri Foundation to a Canadian citizen, or permanent resident, for a first book written in English. 

St. John's-based writer Don McKay will be awarded the $25,000 lifetime achievement award. He's won multiple Governor General awards, the Griffin Poetry Prize and was named to the Order of Canada in 2009. His poetry books include Birding, or Desire, Night Field and Lurch.

Last year's Griffin Poetry Prize winner was American poet Roger Reeves for his collection Best Barbarian. Nêhiyaw writer Emily Riddle won the Canadian First Book Prize for her debut poetry collection The Big Melt. 

2023 marked the first time the Griffin Poetry Prize gave out a single award. The prize previously awarded $65,000 to two works of English-language poetry from the previous year — one Canadian and one international.

Other past Canadian winners include Tolu Oloruntoba, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Anne Carson, Roo Borson, Dionne Brand and Jordan Abel.