The Griffin Poetry Prize has announced the 10 books longlisted for the 2025 prize.

More than 500 books were submitted for this year’s $130,000 prize: jurors read 578 books, including 47 works in translation from 20 different languages. The books were submitted by 219 publishers from 17 countries.

This year’s jury is comprised of Canadian poet and novelist Anne Michaels, Northern Irish poet and novelist Nick Laird, and Polish poet, translator, and essayist Tomasz Różycki.

This year’s shortlist includes a book from Toronto-based independent poetry press Knife Fork Book, written by Dale Martin Smith, a poet and essayist who is a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University. Smith is the only Canadian poet on this year’s longlist.

The longlisted books are:

• Ruin, Blossom by John Burnside (Jonathan Cape/Penguin Random House Canada)
• The Great Zoo by Aaron Coleman, translated from the Spanish written by Nicolás Guillén (University of Chicago Press/Phoenix Poets Series)
• Kiss the Eyes of Peace by Brian Henry, translated from the Slovenian written by Tomaž Šalamun (Milkweed Editions)
• The Goner School by Jessica Laser (University of Iowa Press)
• Psyche Running: Selected Poems, 2005–2022  by Karen Leeder, translated from the German by Durs Grünbein (Seagull Books)
• Still City by Oksana Maksymchuk (University of Pittsburgh Press)
• Scattered Snows, to the North by Carl Phillips (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux)
• Modern Poetry by Diane Seuss (Graywolf Press)
• The Size of Paradise by Dale Martin Smith (knife fork book)
• Sidetracks by Jeffrey Yang, translated from the Chinese written by Bei Dao (New Directions Publishing)

The longlist includes four translations and the work of several late poets. Burnside, a Scottish poet, died last May, several weeks after Rain, Blossom was published. The Great Zoo is a translation of the work of the late Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén, and Kiss the Eyes of Peace is a translation of the work of the late Slovenian poet Tomaž Šalamun.

A five-book shortlist will be announced on April 3. The winner will be named on June 4 at the Griffin Poetry Prize Readings in Toronto. The winner of the $10,000 Canadian First Book Prize will be announced on May 31.

Correction, March 24: This story has been updated to reflect the fact that Dale Martin Smith is Canadian.