Canadian poetry veteran Don McKay and Frederick Seidel, one of the founding editors of iconic literary magazine The Paris Review, are among the seven shortlisted poets vying for the 2007 Griffin Poetry Prize.

Canadian poet Don McKay received his third nomination for the Griffin Poetry Prize on Tuesday.
(Don McKay)

McKay, a two-time Governor General's Literary Award winner, logged his third Griffin nomination at the shortlist announcement in Toronto Tuesday for one of the world's most lucrative poetry honours.

"Don McKay is up for the third time because he is a really, truly great poet. I would be surprised if he wasn't [nominated] regularly," prize founder Scott Griffin told CBC Arts Online moments after he and trustee David Young unveiled the 2007 finalists.

"The fact that some of the names are coming up and recurring for the second or third time, that gets people familiar with these poets and, hopefully at some point, they say, 'Well maybe I should try and read some of these guys and see what it's all about.'"

The British Columbia-based McKay, who has worked as a writing instructor, editor and essayist in addition to his poetry, is nominated for his latest poetry collection, Strike/Slip.

His competition for the $50,000 Canadian portion of the prize will be two Toronto-based writers: Ken Babstock, a Newfoundland-born Atlantic Poetry Prize-winner who is nominated for Airstream Land Yacht, and Toronto poet, author and York University professor Priscila Uppal, nominated for Ontological Necessities.

Acclaimed U.S. poet Frederick Seidel is among the four international Griffin nominees for his latest work, Ooga-Booga.

Reclusive Seidel among international finalists

Seidel, the reclusive, Manhatten-based, award-winning poet who was a protege of U.S. poets Ezra Pound and Robert Lowell, is nominated for the $50,000 international Griffin honour for his latest collection,  Ooga-Booga.

His competition includes two fellow Americans and a young, British poet:

• U.K. lecturer and Whitbread Poetry Award-winner Paul Fraley, nominated for Tramp in Flames.
• National Book Critics Circle Award winner and English professor Rodney Jones, nominated for Salvation Blues.
• Pulitzer Prize and U.S. National Book Award-winner Charles Wright, nominated for Scar Tissue.

The seven shortlisted authors will be invited to take part in a poetry reading in Toronto in June, with the two winners to be announced at a lavish prize gala June 6.

Judges whittled final 7 down from 483

This year's three-judge panel — poets John Burnside, Charles Simic and Karen Solie — read through a record 483 books of poetry submitted to organizers from 15 countries.

"The prize is beginning to reach out into the international market and that allows us to discover poets that we might not otherwise encounter and, perhaps more importantly, to promote our Canadian poets internationally far beyond our normal Canadian readership," Griffin said Tuesday.

Since handing out the first prize in 2001, organizers have been increasingly escorting some of the shortlisted Griffin poets and the winners to literary events in Canada and abroad. Recent jaunts have included visits to Edinburgh, London and Dublin.

Next up is Iceland, which Griffin says "has a very strong literary readership, particularly in poetry." Possible future trips may include Rotterdam and Berlin.

The jet-setting Toronto businessman, who created the award in 2000 with the help of literary figures like Michael Ondaatje and Margaret Atwood, recently returned from Sudan, where his latest adventures had him riding camels across the desert with Bedouins.

"They have an oral tradition and it's very much about poetry," he said of the nomadic tribe, while lamenting that he did not speak Arabic.

"That's really some of the origins of true poetry."