Durs Grünbein Shortlisted for the Prestigious Griffin Poetry Prize
News28.04.2025
Durs Grünbein’s Psyche Running: Selected Poems, 2005-2022, translated by Karen Leeder and published by Seagull Books, has been shortlisted for the prestigious Griffin Poetry Prize, one of the biggest poetry prizes in the English-speaking world.
Founded in 2000, the Griffin Poetry Prize is awarded annually for the best collection of poetry written in, or translated into, English. Previous winners include Anne Carson, John Ashbery, Alice Notley, and Susan Howe.
In their citation, the judges had the following to say about the collection: »Durs Grünbein’s Psyche Running is a brilliant overview and selection of a poet who satisfies our hunger to be serious, as again and again he finds himself ›between words and things‹. Karen Leeder’s adept translations establish a new version of Grünbein in English: universal, lyrical, philosophical.«
Psyche Running gathers together poems from almost twenty years of Grünbein’s oeuvre. In his review on the collection, writer and translator Michael Eskin wrote: »Nothing affords me more pleasure, as an enthusiast of poetry and the art of translation, than to come across both at their most accomplished, passionate, intelligent, thought-provoking, and world-creating. The meeting, or rather blending, of the minds we get to witness in Karen Leeder’s translations of Durs Grünbein’s poetry does not only offer us a sheer cross-cultural cornucopia rife with wistfulness, joy, pain, and meditative relief, but it also allows us to be addressed by one of the greatest and most singular wordsmiths alive through the English mask of one of the premier translators of poetry at the present time.«
The winner will be announced at the Griffin Poetry Prize Readings to be held at Koerner Hall in Toronto on Wednesday, June 4, and will be awarded $130,000.
Founded in 2000, the Griffin Poetry Prize is awarded annually for the best collection of poetry written in, or translated into, English. Previous winners include Anne Carson, John Ashbery, Alice Notley, and Susan Howe.
In their citation, the judges had the following to say about the collection: »Durs Grünbein’s Psyche Running is a brilliant overview and selection of a poet who satisfies our hunger to be serious, as again and again he finds himself ›between words and things‹. Karen Leeder’s adept translations establish a new version of Grünbein in English: universal, lyrical, philosophical.«
Psyche Running gathers together poems from almost twenty years of Grünbein’s oeuvre. In his review on the collection, writer and translator Michael Eskin wrote: »Nothing affords me more pleasure, as an enthusiast of poetry and the art of translation, than to come across both at their most accomplished, passionate, intelligent, thought-provoking, and world-creating. The meeting, or rather blending, of the minds we get to witness in Karen Leeder’s translations of Durs Grünbein’s poetry does not only offer us a sheer cross-cultural cornucopia rife with wistfulness, joy, pain, and meditative relief, but it also allows us to be addressed by one of the greatest and most singular wordsmiths alive through the English mask of one of the premier translators of poetry at the present time.«
The winner will be announced at the Griffin Poetry Prize Readings to be held at Koerner Hall in Toronto on Wednesday, June 4, and will be awarded $130,000.