Mexican poet Homer Aridjis, Vancouver translator George McWhirter win $130K Griffin Poetry Prize
CBC Books | Posted: June 6, 2024 3:55 PM | Last Updated: June 6
They are recognized for their collection Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence
Mexican poet Homero Aridjis and Canadian translator George McWhirter have won the 2024 Griffin Poetry Prize for the collection Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence.
The $130,000 prize is the world's largest prize for a single book of poetry written in or translated into English. Because the winning book is a translation from Spanish, the Griffin Poetry Prize will allocate 60 per cent of the prize to the translator and 40 per cent to the original poet.
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.
"I'm so sorry he is not here to accept the prize for his work, which is expansive," McWhirter said in his acceptance speech. "It covers everything that you could think of in Mexico. It covers the people, the politics, the history and the dreams and the myths. And it all floats through his poetry."
McWhirter has been translating Aridjis's poetry since 1987. "What I particularly like is it he writes about real things," he told CBC Books in a interview after he won. "It does move into the 'other,' as they used to call it, 'el otro,' the other side of things, but he's always writing about things that happen, people that do things."
LISTEN | George McWhirter on translating the works of Homero Aridjis:
The 2024 jury was 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. -2024 Griffin Prize jury
"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 remaining shortlisted writers were 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 and Door by Ann Lauterbach. They will each receive $10,000.
The $10,000 Canadian First Book Prize was also awarded to St. John's writer Maggie Burton.
St. John's-based writer Don McKay was 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.
LISTEN | Quick Q: Don McKay on receiving the Griffin Poetry Prize's Lifetime Recognition Award:
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.
With files from The Canadian Press