The $100,000 prize is awarded annually by The Griffin Trust For Excellence In Poetry and is divided equally between a Canadian poet and an international winner – this year awarded to Canadian Don McKay and international winner Charles Wright. However, Uppal, coordinator of the Faculty of Arts’ Creative Writing Program at York, was thrilled to be in the top three Canadian poets shortlisted for the prize for her book Ontological Necessities, published by Exile Editions. At 32, she is the youngest poet ever shortlisted for the prize, and the first person of South Asian descent.

“The experience has been wonderful. The Griffin Prize brings a lot of attention to poetry and lets people know poetry is not a closed community,” Uppal said today. “It helps people who love poetry find poets they may never have heard of, and lets others know about the latest book by their favourite poet.”

The Griffin Prize is awarded annually to encourage excellence in poetry written in English anywhere in the world. Three distinguished poets were the judges for the award this year – John Burnside from Scotland, Charles Simic from the United States, and Karen Solie, of Toronto. They chose a shortlist of three Canadians and four international poets after reading 483 works of poetry written by poets from 35 countries around the world.

“What I really like about the Griffin Prize is that it is not only Canadian, but international,” said Uppal. “So I was able to meet poets I admire – Charles Simic, for example – and many others, from countries such as England, Scotland and the U.S.”

In their citation, the judges described the poems in Ontological Necessities as “audacious, irreverent, funny, and at the same time deeply serious.” Uppal’s poems explore notions of identity and other conventions by striving to see through the lies, according to the judges, who characterize Uppal as “a political poet who sounds like no other political poet, someone who is bound to get in trouble in every political system in the world.” 

The judges’ citation concludes, “Uppal has done the rare and difficult thing: she has brought a brand new voice to poetry.”

Uppal and the other shortlisted poets read excerpts from their books to a sold-out crowd of more than 800 people on Tuesday, prior to the Wednesday-night awards gala. The judges also selected poems from the shortlist to compile The Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology: A Selection of the 2007 Shortlist, edited by Karen Solie and published by House of Anansi Press. Royalties from the anthologies are donated to UNESCO’s World Poetry Day. Copies of the poetry books that were submitted to the awards competition are being donated to Corrections Canada.

*Priscila Uppal earned a BA in English and creative writing at York in 1997 and a PhD in English in 2004. Her other poetry books are: How to Draw Blood From a Stone (1998), Confessions of A Fertility Expert (1999), Pretending to Die (2001) and Live Coverage (2003). Her poetry has been translated into Korean, Croatian, Latvian and Italian. In 2002, Uppal’s novel The Divine Economy of Salvation was published in Canada and the United States, and was translated into Dutch and Greek.

For more information, see the Griffin Poetry Prize Web site.

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