Poet, novelist and painter P.K. Page, who died in January, has been nominated for the Griffin prize for her final book. (Marilyn Bowering/Hedgerow Press) The Griffin Poetry Prize, Canada's most prestigious award for poetry, has boosted its prize pot in honour of its 10th anniversary.

This year's winners of the awards for best international and best Canadian poet will receive $75,000 each, up from $50,000. And, for the first time, every finalist will also receive a cash award, in the amount of $10,000.

Prize founder Scott Griffin made the announcement in a press conference on Tuesday.

"We wanted to make a statement to poets and to the international world that this prize and poetry is really important," he said.

This year's short lists for the prizes, also announced Tuesday, are dominated by women poets, among them P.K. Page, one of Canada's most influential writers.

Page, who died in January at age 93, is nominated for her last book, Coal and Roses, a collection of glosas. A glosa is an intricate poetry form that involves taking a line of poetry by other writers —in Page's case poets such as Thom Gunn, Ted Hughes and Dionne Brand — and building a new poem out of it.

Toronto poet Karen Solie is nominated for her poetry collection Pigeon. (Griffin Poetry Prize) "It's a shame she can't be there to receive the award if she wins," Griffin said, adding that Page was shortlisted in 2003. He recalled the Victoria, B.C.-based poet as "quite a character."

Page is up against Kate Hall of Montreal for The Certainty Dream and Karen Solie of Toronto for Pigeon.

Hall, a winner of the Irving Layton Award, was praised as "a person who, from within the confines of our grand funny country, can treat the topics of life, dreams, death, winter and animals without earnestness."

The jury said Solie's work is "powerful, philosophical, intelligent, especially adept at pulling great wisdom from the ordinary." She was nominated for the Griffin Prize once before, in 2002.

The international short list is also strong on women poets and includes:

• John Glenday of Cawdor, Scotland, for Grain.
• Louise Gluck of Cambridge, Mass., for A Village Life.
• Eilean Ni Chuilleanain of Dublin for The Sun-fish.
• Valérie Rouzeau of Saint-Ouen, France, for Cold Spring in Winter, translated from French by Susan Wicks.

All of the poets will read at Koerner Hall in Toronto on June 2, the night before the awards ceremony.

Griffin said the short list was chosen from among 500 books submitted from around the world. The number of entries has increased from 127 in the first year as the prize has grown in stature, he said.