Karen Leeder's English translation of Durs Grünbein's Psyche Running wins Griffin Poetry Prize

Globe and Mail

3 days ago

Karen Leeder's translation of Psyche Running: Selected Poems, 2005-2022, by German poet and essayist Durs Grünbein, took the lucrative Griffin Poetry Prize at a Toronto gala on Wednesday evening.
The international prize, founded in 2000 by Canadian businessman Scott Griffin, is worth $130,000. In the case of translated works, 60 per cent goes to the translator; 40 per cent, to the original author.
Published by Seagull Books, Psyche Running covers the development of Mr. Grünbein's poems over the past two decades. The Griffin Poetry Prize judges cited the book as a 'brilliant overview and selection of a poet who satisfies our hunger to be serious.'
The judges cited Ms. Leeder's translations from German to English as 'universal, lyrical, philosophical.' She is a British writer, translator and scholar of German culture who has previously won awards for her translations of Mr. Grünbein's work.
Born in Dresden in 1962, Mr. Grünbein is considered the most significant and successful poet of his generation in Germany. Michael Hofmann's Ashes for Breakfast, which sampled poetry from the German's first four collections, brought the author into English for the first time in 2005, and was shortlisted for the Griffin in 2006.
The poetry fans at Koerner Hall not only took in readings from Mr. Grünbein, Ms. Leeder and other shortlisted writers, but witnessed the presentation of the 2025 Lifetime Recognition Award (worth $25,000) to the esteemed Margaret Atwood, a Griffin Poetry Prize co-founder and trustee emeritus.
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The 85-year-old author of The Handmaid's Tale published her first book of poetry in 1961. She was joined in conversation on stage with Griffin trustee and U.S. poet Carolyn Forché.
This year's other shortlisted books were Modern Poetry, by Diane Seuss; The Great Zoo, translated by Aaron Coleman from the Spanish written by Nicolás Guillén; Scattered Snows, to the North, by Carl Phillips; and Kiss the Eyes of Peace, translated by Brian Henry from the Slovenian written by Tomaž Šalamun.
Each of the finalists receive $10,000.
When the Griffin was founded, separate prizes went to one Canadian and one international poet who writes in the English language. In 2022, the two awards were consolidated into a single international prize.
This year's jury members were Northern Irish poet, novelist and critic Nick Laird, Polish poet and translator Tomasz Różycki, and Toronto poet and novelist Anne Michaels, winner of last year's Giller Prize for the novel Held. They each read 578 books of poetry, including 47 translations from 20 languages, submitted by 219 publishers from 17 different countries.
Whitehorse poet Dawn Macdonald read from her Northerny, this year's Canadian First Book Prize winner. Calgary's Isabella Torres Rangel, one of the finalists for the Canada-wide student recitation competition Poetry in Voice/Les voix de la poésie, recited the poem Lake Michigan, by Daniel Borzutzky.
Last year's Griffin winner was George McWhirter, the son of a shipyard worker and Vancouver's first poet laureate.