Kevin Young won the 2026 Griffin Poetry Prize.

American poet Kevin Young has won the 2026 Griffin Poetry Prize.

Young was named the winner at a ceremony in Toronto on June 3. He was one of seven poets shortlisted for this year’s $130,000 prize. The finalists each receive $10,000. Young won for Night Watch (Alfred A. Knopf/Penguin Random House), a collection written over 16 years.

In their citation, the jury (comprised of Halifax-based poet and academic Luke Hathaway, El Paso, Texas–based poet and creative writing professor Andrea Cote, and Nashville, Tennessee-based poet and academic Major Jackson) called the book “a melancholic and haunting collection of sequence poems that layers multiple literary traditions with a dexterity that amounts to a provocation of sonic and epic proportions.”

Young is the poetry editor of The New Yorker, the host of Poetry Podcast, and the author of 16 books of poetry and prose.

This year’s jury considered 461 books of poetry, including 34 translations from 19 languages, submitted by 219 publishers in 42 different countries.