Canisia Lubrin Wins Griffin Poetry Prize
Canisia Lubrin, the Shaftesbury Creative Writer-in-Residence at Victoria College, has won the $65,000 Griffin Poetry Prize for her second poetry collection, The Dyzgraphxst (McClelland & Stewart, 2020). The announcement was made via video on June 22 as part of a short film. This year, there were over 680 submissions from 231 publishers around the world. Lubrin’s work addresses themes of selfhood, capitalism and climate change.
Earlier this year, Lubrin was appointed the inaugural Shaftesbury Creative Writer-in-Residence for 2021–22 at Victoria College. This position supports and enhances the teaching and learning that takes place in the Creative Expression and Society program and the Norman Jewison Stream of the Vic One program.
Born in St. Lucia, Lubrin currently resides in Ontario where she is working on a short-fiction collection for Knopf Canada. She also serves as poetry editor for McClelland & Stewart and has worked as a teacher at the University of Toronto as well as OCAD University. Her work has received international recognition; some of her recent accolades include winning the 2021 OCM Bocus Prize for Caribbean Literature as well as being named a 2021 recipient of the prestigious Windham-Campbell prize awarded by Yale University. She has also been shortlisted for the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry.
The Griffin Poetry Prize is an annual award of two $65,000 prizes—one for a book of Canadian poetry and the other for an international book of poetry.