Billy-Ray Belcourt wins $65K Griffin Poetry Prize for This Wound is a World

Billy-Ray Belcourt is the Canadian winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize for his debut collection This Wound is a World. The $65,000 prizeis one of the richest awards in the world for a book of poetry. This Wound is a Worldmerges the personal with the academic, envisioning a "decolonialkind of heaven that is searchable, findable."

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Belcourt was very emotional as he accepted the prize.

"This book was written to not be a book. It was written between the ages of 19 and 21, to allow me to figure out how to be in the world, a world that I cannot want, a world that many of us who are Indigenouscannot want.But it was written also to bring about the world that we do want, collectively," he said on stage during the gala event in Toronto.

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This Wound is a World also won the2018 Indigenous Voices Awardfor most significant work of poetry in English and is a finalist fortheGerald Lampert Memorial Award and the Raymond Souster Award.

The other Canadian finalists were I have to live.by Aisha Sasha John andSame Diffby Donato Mancini.

The international winner was American poet Susan Howe for her collection Debths.

The other international finalists wereHeaven is All Goodbyesby Tongo Eisen-Martin,Whereasby Layli Long Soldier andHard Childby Natalie Shapero.

The jury,composedof Canadian poet Ian Williams, British poet Sarah Howe and American poet Ben Lerner, read 542 books of poetry from 33 countries.

The 2018 lifetime recipient was AnaBlandiana, one of Romania's most acclaimed poets.Blandianahaspublished 14 books of poetry, two short story collections, seven books of essays and one novel. Her work has been translated into 26 languages and collected in 47 books of poetry and prose to date.

Blandianais known for her outspoken poems and views on social and political issues, particularly her opposition stance to Nicolae Ceauescu's communist regime in her home country during the 1970s and 1980s. Over the years, her works have become symbols of an ethical consciousness that refuseto be silenced by a totalitarian government.

The Griffin Prize has been awarded annually since 2001. Past Canadian winners include Anne Carson, Roo Borson, Dionne Brand and Jordan Abel.