Annal:2004 Griffin Poetry Prize – Canadian
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Griffin Poetry Prize in the year 2004. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
Loop: Poems
- 2004 Griffin Canadian winner
- Score: 10.54
In Loop, Anne Simpson explores the power, and the anguish, of many different modes of return—retrieval, revision, the covering of old ground with eyes wider and thoughts reconditioned by difficult wisdom. These poems occur at that place where a focused, compassionate vision comes to inhabit language and to find the forms that will suffice: a Möbius strip poem that loops back on itself; a crown of sonnets that take us back to the shock and grief of the twin towers and find deep resonance with paintings by Brueghel; a set of quick improvisations like the…
- 2004 Griffin Canadian shortlist
- Score: 6.54
In Now You Care, her fifth collection of poetry, Di Brandt voices a passionate argument against environmental degradation and a plea for psychic transformation in our violent times. Tuned in to the toxic fallout of over-industrialization and war, these poems face the dark side of our postmodern climate with a language that doesn’t give in. They tremble and shake, they rage against despair, they speak against death and wrestle with the fateful spirits of Armageddon to loosen their choke-hold on humanity. Perhaps we won’t figure it out and the horizon is…
- 2004 Griffin Canadian shortlist
- Score: 6.54
Go-go Dancing for Elvis by Leslie Greentree is the story of two sisters: the beautiful sister, who travels the States as a dancer for an Elvis impersonator, and her more conventional sister, who stays home and renovates her house. It’s a story of love, jealousy, betrayal, and the people who used to have our phone numbers. Most of all it’s a story about Hawkeye Pierce and power tools.
