American Roger Reeves wins Griffin Poetry Prize for ‘Best Barbarian’

TORONTO – American poet Roger Reeves won the $130,000 Griffin Poetry Prize with his book “Best Barbarian” at a ceremony in Toronto on Wednesday evening.

The Austin, Texas-based writer is also the recipient of a Whiting Award and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship.

Griffin judges praise “Best Barbarian” for charting “the ruptures and violences enacted across time and space — particularly against Black humanity — while leaning always toward beauty.”

In his acceptance speech, Reeves thanked his grandmother, who moved from South Carolina to New Jersey to clean homes, including for some of the first Black women to get PhDs in the United States.

When she was cleaning those houses, he said, she’d tell her grandson to look up at the shelves.

“She would say look at those shelves. Just look at them,” Reeves said.

“There’s no way that I could ever have imagined that looking at those bookshelves would bring me here, to this.”

This is the first year the Griffin Poetry Prize has combined its categories for homegrown and international poets into a single global purse.

The other shortlisted works, which each receive $10,000, are “The Hurting Kind” by Ada Limón, “The Threshold” by Egyptian-Canadian Iman Mersal and translated by Robyn Creswell, “Exculpatory Lilies” by British Columbia-based writer Susan Musgrave and “Time Is a Mother” by Ocean Vuong.

This was the Griffin’s first year back to hosting in-person celebrations since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In addition to merging the prizes, the Griffin Trust did away with its former arrangement of holding separate events for the poetry reading and a gala the following evening, where the winners would be announced.

Instead, members of the poetry-loving public — and publishing industry — packed into Toronto’s Koerner Hall to hear the announcement right after the readings.

At the event, Buffalo, N.Y.-born author Fanny Howewas named the recipient of this year’s Lifetime Recognition Award. She was shortlisted for the Griffin in 2001 for “Selected Poems” and again in 2005 for “On the Ground.”

The Griffin used to award one Canadian and one international winner in two separate competitions worth $65,000 each. But last year, organizers said they would change the format to hand out a single prize.

When benefactor Scott Griffin announced last year that he was doing away with the Canada-specific category, some observers were concerned it could hurt homegrownpoets’ chances to gain recognition.

Griffin dismissed those concerns, noting that he also added a $10,000 prize for a Canadian First Book of poetry.

The inaugural award went to Emily Riddle, author of “The Big Melt.” In addition to the cash prize, she’ll receive a six-week residency in Italy.

Griffin also added his nameto the Writers’ Trust of Canada poetry prize this year, more than doubling its purse. The Latner Griffin Writers’ Trust Poetry Prize, which goes to a mid-career poet, is now worth $60,000.

Griffin said he pictured the reconfigured Griffin Poetry Prize going to a “mature poet who’s well-known.”

A combination of well-established and up-and-coming poets were previously awarded the Griffin. The Canadian prize helped launch the careers of such rising stars as Billy-Ray Belcourt, Liz Howard and Tolu Oloruntoba, all of whom were recognized for their first collections.

Award organizers said this year’s three judges each read 602 books of poetry, including 54 translations from 20 languages, submitted by 229 publishers from 20 different countries.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 7, 2023.

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