Canisia Lubrin is the Canadian winner of $65K Griffin Poetry Prize for The Dyzgraphxst

Canisia Lubrin is the Canadian winner of the 2021 Griffin Poetry Prize for her poetry collectionThe Dyzgraphxst.

The annual awardgives out two $65,000 prizes one to a book of Canadian poetry and one to an international book of poetry making it one of the world's richest prizes of its kind.

The Dyzgraphxstis set against the backdrop of contemporary capitalist fascism, nationalism and the climate disaster, where Jejune, the central figure,grapples with understandingtheir existence and identity.

"The Dyzgraphxstis Canisia Lubrin's spectacular feat of architecture called a poem. Built with 'I' a single mark on the page, a voice, a blade, 'a life-force soaring back' and assembled over seven acts addressing language, grammar, sentence, line, stageand world, the poet forms, invents, surprisesand sharpens life. Generous, generatingand an abundance of rigour. A wide and widening ocean of feeling are the blueprints of this book," the jury said in a statement.

• Canisia Lubrin focused on the self to speak her universal truths in her latest poetry collection

Lubrinis a writer, editor and teacher. She was born in St. Lucia and now lives in Ontario.

The Dyzgraphxst alsowon the 2021 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literatureand Lubrinwas nameda recipient of the2021 Windham-Campbell Prize.

Dream 17: Canisia Lubrin reads from her Griffin Poetry Prize-shortlisted book The Dyzgraphxst

3 years ago

Duration 1:33

"Let them say I have seen the long days. I have seen them rising from the huts as smoke, I have seen them, as forests turned brown & flat for remembering themselves."

The other Canadian finalists were Joseph Dandurandfor The East Side of It Alland Yusuf SaadiforPluviophile.

BelarusianpoetValzhyna Mort won the international award forMusic for the Dead and Resurrected.

InMusic for the Dead and Resurrected, Mort writes about memory as something that can reopen a wound or act as an inoculation.

"'Here, history comes to an end / like a movie / with rolling credits of headstones,' writes Valzhyna Mort, though the history doesn't end, but takes deep and memorable residence in the music of these poems. The collection offers many different kinds of poetry: from elegies to protest poems to moments of lyric intimacy. But in all of them there's an unmistakable emotion embodied in craft, one that continues to echo in our minds long after we finish the book. And this is perhaps the reason why Mort's striking pages about Belarus are ultimately poems about all of us: they set our remembering and our grief to inimitable music," the jury said aboutMusic for the Dead and Resurrected in a statement.

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The other international finalists were American poet Victoria ChangforObit, Indian American poet Srikanth ReddyforUnderworld Litand American poet Tracy K. Smith andChinese poetry translator Changtai Bi for their translation ofMy Name Will Grow Wide Like a TreebyYi Lei.

All the remaining Canadian and international finalists will eachreceive$10,000.

More than 680 books were submitted for consideration, from 231 publishers from around the world.

The2021 jurywas comprised of Canadian poet Souvankham Thammavongsa, Ukrainian poet Ilya Kaminsky andSlovenian poet Ale teger.

Montreal poetKaie Kelloughwon last year's Canadian prize for his collectionMagnetic Equator.

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Last year'sinternational winner wasTimeby Lebanese poet Etel Adnan, translated from French to English by American Sarah Riggs.

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