Here’s The Shortlist For The 2025 Griffin Poetry Prize.

Today, nan Griffin Poetry Prize—the world’s largest world prize for a azygous book of poesy published successful English—announced its 2025 shortlist, which was winnowed down from a excavation of 578 submissions, including 47 translations from 20 languages, representing 219 publishers from 17 different countries. The prize is judged this twelvemonth by Nick Laird, Anne Michaels, and Tomasz Różycki; nan victor will beryllium announced astatine a ceremonial successful Toronto connected June 4th, and will person C$130,000. Each different shortlisted writer will beryllium awarded $10,000.

In nan meantime, here’s nan shortlist, on pinch nan judges’ citations for each work:

Nicolás Guillén, tr. Aaron Coleman, The Great Zoo
The University of Chicago Press

Judges’ citation: The Great Zoo by Nicolás Guillén is 1 of nan masterpieces of Latin American poetry. Originally published successful Spanish successful 1967 and translated by Aaron Coleman pinch a subtle knowing of nan contexts of assemblage oppression and exoticism, this bilingual version remains a applicable commentary connected our times. The Great Zoo seeks to merge history, society, nature, and dreams into nan territories of this singular park. It is not only an atypical bestiary of nonsensical and imprecatory zoography, not only a humorous book of fables pinch unusual morals, but besides a astonishing effort of societal disapproval that mocks nan taxonomic and classificatory pridefulness of man pretending to gather, successful cages, nan surviving complexity of nature. The zoo’s animals comprises ideas, emotions, phenomena, anthropomorphized animals, and men who are animals; nan descriptions of nan type are masterpieces of suggestion, moving connected our imagination pinch awesome force. The book, entertaining and moving, is simply beautiful.

Tomaž Šalamun, tr. Brian Henry, Kiss nan Eyes of Peace
Milkweed Editions

Judges’ citation: Kiss nan Eyes of Peace is an bonzer English action of poems from nan full assemblage of activity of 1 of nan champion Central European poets of nan twentieth century, Slovenian writer Tomaž Šalamun, presented by writer Brian Henry pinch precision and power. The English scholar experiences this poesy astatine its finest, pinch its characteristic post-Dada, unlimited freedom, and a peculiar and unmistakable lightness of diction. Šalamun turns our reference habits upside down—he creates avant-garde linguistic structures successful which nan poem hangs connected nan question, connected nan collision of nan actual and nan surrealistic, wherever a creation of imagination begins. A hypnotic series of highly condensed phrases makes Šalamun’s absurdism a realistic portrayal of a modern world wherever strangeness tin beryllium a root of bonzer beauty. This action restores religion successful nan glory and powerfulness of poetry, successful its chaotic state and beauty.

Durs Grünbein, tr. Karen Leeder, Psyche Running
Seagull Books

Judges’ citation: Durs Grünbein’s Psyche Running is simply a superb overview and action of a writer who satisfies our hunger to beryllium serious, arsenic again and again he finds himself “between words and things.” Karen Leeder’s adept translations found a caller type of Grünbein successful English: universal, lyrical, philosophical.

Carl Phillips, Scattered Snows, to nan North
Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Judges’ citation: It is Carl Phillips’ mastery that these poems measure, weigh, question, prevaricate: “it seemed,” “maybe,” “what if,” “it’s hard, these days, to cognize for judge what’s true,” “We weren’t afraid. Nor / unafraid.” And it is Phillips’ magic that this diction renders greater precision, not less; an astonishing accuracy successful naming nan liminal abstraction from which our comprehension, acceptance, farewells, memories look and submerge again. Phillips has recovered a measurement to articulate emotion successful each its assertions and disguises— calibrated successful each its doubt, tenderness, forms of desire, loyalty, solitudes. In nan poem “Stop Shaking,” he writes: “I support making nan aforesaid avoidable / fewer mistakes that I’ve ever made, and past regretting them, / and past regretting them less.” In reside and diction, these poems ne'er stray crossed nan statement betwixt honesty and privacy. How grateful nan scholar is to participate and re-enter these poems, to beryllium entered by them. For successful their articulation of what is astir elusive—what we cannot understand and besides someway know—in their nickname of unanswerable quality limitation, is simply a benignant of forgiveness.

Diane Seuss, Modern Poetry
Graywolf Press

Judges’ citation: Diane Seuss’ Modern Poetry is nan culmination of a life spent learning nan art, of locating “the beauty of drafting near,” of “seeing done time”—and her wry, compelling reside and effortless method extremity successful thing very for illustration wisdom. She has go an indispensable poet.