The winners of this year’s Griffin Poetry Prize, the world’s largest prize for a first edition single collection of poetry written in English, were announced in Toronto last night. Fady Joudah’s Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me, and Other Poems, a translation from Arabic of Palestinian poet Ghassan Zaqtan’s poetry won the international category. David McFadden’s book What’s the Score? won the Canadian category. The prize for each was C$65,000.

The winners were selected from 509 submissions from 40 publishers around the world. Scott Griffin, the philanthropist and poetry aficionado who funds the prize, praised the judges who read and evaluated all of the submissions in less than two and a half months as the “unsung heroes of this whole enterprise.” This year’s jury members were Canadian poet Suzanne Buffam, American poet Mark Doty, and Wang Ping, who was born in Shanghai and immigrated to the U.S. in 1986.

Tom Sandler
Scott Griffin and David McFadden  celebrate.
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