Scott Griffin is founder of the Griffin Poetry Prize, one of the world's most generous awards for poetry.
Scott Griffin, OC (born 1938) is a Canadian businessman and philanthropist best known for founding the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2000, one of the world's most generous poetry awards, and Poetry In Voice, a bilingual recitation competition for Canadian high schools. Celebrating its 20th year in 2020, the Griffin Poetry Prize has become known as the most adventurous and generous international literary award. Griffin has been interviewed on CBC Radio,[1] discussing the genesis of his love for poetry, reading from his favourite works and paying tribute to poet Seamus Heaney, who received the Griffin Lifetime Recognition Award in 2012.[2]
He was formerly chairman of the Governors of Sedbergh School in Canada, a director of DGC Entertainment Ventures Corp and Chancellor of Bishop's University.
Griffin was previously chairman, director and majority shareholder of two Canadian manufacturing companies. General Kinetics Engineering Corporation (Brampton, Ontario, Canada) designs and manufactures components for military and other tracked vehicles and high-speed rail.[3] Advance Precision Ltd. (Mississauga, Ontario, Canada) designed and manufactured parts for the automotive industry, and was acquired by a US manufacturing firm.
Griffin was on several NGO boards, as a director of Canadian Executive Services Overseas (CESO), a volunteer advisor to CESO and a director of African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF) Canada and AMREF International.
In 2006, Griffin published a memoir entitled My Heart Is Africa that recounted his two-year aviation adventure starting in 1996, working for the Flying Doctors Service in Africa. All royalties from the sale of the book are donated to the AMREF Flying Doctors Service. The book was named to The Globe and Mail top 100 for 2006.
Griffin is married to noted jewellery designer Krystyne Griffin and has four children and eight grandchildren. He was appointed an officer of the Order of Canada on December 30, 2012.[4]
Seamus Justin Heaney was an Irish poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. Among his best-known works is Death of a Naturalist (1966), his first major published volume. Heaney was and is still recognised as one of the principal contributors to poetry in Ireland during his lifetime. American poet Robert Lowell described him as "the most important Irish poet since Yeats", and many others, including the academic John Sutherland, have said that he was "the greatest poet of our age". Robert Pinsky has stated that "with his wonderful gift of eye and ear Heaney has the gift of the story-teller." Upon his death in 2013, The Independent described him as "probably the best-known poet in the world".
Lynn Crosbie is a Canadian poet and novelist. She teaches at the University of Toronto.
Christopher Dewdney is a prize-winning Canadian poet and essayist. His poetry reflects his interest in natural history. His book Acquainted with the Night, an investigation into darkness was nominated for both the Charles Taylor Prize and the Governor General's Award.
The Griffin Poetry Prize is Canada's most generous poetry award. It was founded in 2000 by businessman and philanthropist Scott Griffin.
Erín Moure Erín Moure is a Canadian poet and translator with 18 books of poetry, a coauthored book of poetry, a volume of essays, a book of articles on translation, a poetics, and two memoirs; she has translated or co-translated 21 books of poetry and two of biopoetics from French, Spanish, Galician, Portuguese, and Ukrainian, by poets such as Nicole Brossard, Andrés Ajens, Chantal Neveu, Rosalía de Castro, Chus Pato, Uxío Novoneyra, Lupe Gómez, Fernando Pessoa, and Yuri Izdryk. Three of her own books have appeared in translation, one each in German, Galician, and French. Her work has received the Governor General’s Award twice, Pat Lowther Memorial Award, A. M. Klein Prize twice, and has been a three-time finalist for the Griffin Prize and three-time finalist in the USA for a Best Translated Book Award (Poetry). Her latest is The Elements (2019) and Theophylline: an a-poretic migration will appear in 2023. Her work is rooted in a philosophical mix that accepts mystery, not always immediately accessible, and she has won several prizes, including the Governor General's Award twice.
Lawrence Hill is a Canadian novelist, essayist, and memoirist. He is known for his 2007 novel The Book of Negroes, inspired by the Black Loyalists given freedom and resettled in Nova Scotia by the British after the American Revolutionary War, and his 2001 memoir Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada. The Book of Negroes was adapted for a TV mini-series produced in 2015. He was selected in 2013 for the Massey Lectures: he drew from his non-fiction book Blood: The Stuff of Life, published that year. His ten books include other non-fiction and fictional works, and some have been translated into other languages and published in numerous other countries.
Michael Redhill is an American-born Canadian poet, playwright and novelist. He also writes under the pseudonym Inger Ash Wolfe.
House of Anansi Press is a Canadian publishing company, founded in 1967 by writers Dennis Lee and Dave Godfrey. The company specializes in finding and developing new Canadian writers of literary fiction, poetry, and non-fiction.
Ken Babstock is a Canadian poet. He was born in Newfoundland and raised in the Ottawa Valley. Babstock began publishing his poems in journals and anthologies, winning gold at the 1997 Canadian National Magazine Awards. He lives in Toronto, Ontario.
Bill Gaston is a Canadian novelist, playwright and short story writer. Gaston grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Toronto, Ontario, and North Vancouver, British Columbia. Aside from teaching at various universities, he has worked as a logger, salmon fishing guide, group home worker and, most exotically, playing hockey in the south of France. He is married with four children, including filmmaker Connor Gaston, and lives in Victoria BC, where he teaches at the University of Victoria.
Albert Frank Moritz is a United States-born Canadian poet, teacher, and scholar.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Karen Solie is a Canadian poet.
Zoe Whittall is a Canadian poet, novelist and TV writer. She has published five novels and three poetry collections to date.
Charles Plunket Bourchier Taylor (1935–1997) was a Canadian journalist, author, essayist, and thoroughbred racehorse owner and breeder.
Kevin Michael Connolly is a Canadian poet, editor, and teacher who was born in Biloxi, Mississippi and grew up in Maple, Ontario. Connolly has served as an editor for presses such as ECW Press, Coach House Press, McClelland & Stewart, and he is currently the poetry editor at House of Anansi Press. He has edited and published more than 60 full-length poetry collections, many of them debuts.
Dennis O'Driscoll was an Irish poet, essayist, critic and editor. Regarded as one of the best European poets of his time, Eileen Battersby considered him "the lyric equivalent of William Trevor" and a better poet "by far" than Raymond Carver. Gerard Smyth regarded him as "one of poetry's true champions and certainly its most prodigious archivist". His book on Seamus Heaney is regarded as the definitive biography of the Nobel laureate.
Canada's General Kinetics Engineering Corporation designs and manufactures components for military and other tracked vehicles and high-speed rail.
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