Congratulations to Billy-Ray Belcourt, making history as the youngest winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize, for his debut collection THIS WOUND IS A WORLD (Frontenac House).

From the jury: “Blending the resources of love song and elegy, prayer and manifesto, Billy-Ray Belcourt’s This Wound is a World shows us poetry at its most intimate and politically necessary. Mindful of tangled lineages and the lingering erasures of settler colonialism, Belcourt crafts poems in which ‘history lays itself bare’…Belcourt pursues original forms with which to chart the constellations of queerness and indigeneity, rebellion and survival, desire and embodiedness these poems so fearlessly explore. Between its bold treatment of sexuality and wary anatomy of despair, This Wound is a World peels back the layers of feeling and experience to offer, finally, the glimmerings of hope…”

The Griffin Poetry Prize is awarded annually to recognize excellence in English-language poetry internationally and in Canada.

For more information, please visit: Griffinpoetryprize.com/2018-griffin-poetry-prize

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