Roger Reeves wins Griffin Poetry Prize 2023

Roger Reeves wins Griffin Poetry Prize 2023

Roger Reeves’ collection Best Barbarian won the Griffin Poetry Prize 2023 in Toronto, Canada on Wednesday, June 7, 2023.

The Griffin Poetry Prize is the world’s largest international prize for a first edition single collection of poetry written in or translated into English. The Canada-based prize was founded by businessman and philanthropist Scott Griffin in 2000. The award has geographical categories with one for a Canadian poet and one international poet who writes in the English language. Some previous winners have been Anne Carson, Nikolai Popov, Kamau Brathwaite, and Canisia Lubrin. Tolu Oloruntoba and Douglas Kearney won in 2022.

Judges Nikola Madzirov (Macedonia), Gregory Scofield (Canada), and Natasha Trethewey (USA) each read 602 books of poetry, including 54 translations from 20 languages, submitted by 229 publishers from 20 different countries. The longlist was announced on Wednesday, March 15 before the shortlist was named on April 19.

The winner of the award was declared to be Best Barbarian, Roger Reeves, USA, W. W. Norton at the Griffin Poetry Prize Readings in Toronto on Wednesday. Reeves is the author of King Me and the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, and a 2015 Whiting Award, among other honours. His work has appeared in Poetry, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and elsewhere.

The judges said of Best Barbarian: “Among the many remarkable poems in Best Barbarian is ‘Journey to Satchidananda’ in which the poet writes: ‘The Japanese call it Kintsugi. / Where the vessel broken, only gold will permit / Its healing. Its history.’ The beauty of that repair, which does not hide nor erase the evidence of trauma—of history—but transforms it, is the abiding metaphor in this capacious and wide-ranging meditation. At the intersections of history and myth, elegy and celebration, these poems chart the ruptures and violences enacted across time and space—particularly against black humanity—while leaning always toward beauty. Beauty and tenderness abound in this collection that dares to risk both: a brilliant and ambitious book.”

He receives $130,000 while other shortlisted finalists will each receive $10,000.


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One response to “Roger Reeves wins Griffin Poetry Prize 2023”

  1. […] The Griffin Poetry Prize is the world’s largest international prize for a first edition single collection of poetry written in or translated into English. The Canada-based prize was founded by businessman and philanthropist Scott Griffin in 2000. The award has geographical categories with one for a Canadian poet and one international poet who writes in the English language. Some previous winners have been Anne Carson, Nikolai Popov, Kamau Brathwaite, and Canisia Lubrin. Tolu Oloruntoba and Douglas Kearney won in 2022 and Roger Reeves won it in 2023. […]

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