Perth, Ont.-based poet Phil Hall won the Governor General's Literary Award for Killdeer and now is nominated for the Griffin Poetry Prize. (Griffin Poetry Foundation)

Toronto poet Ken Babstock, B.C.’s Jan Zwicky and Perth, Ont.’s Phil Hall are vying for the $65,000 Griffin Poetry Prize, Canada’s richest award for poetry.

Hall is nominated for his Governor General’s Award-winning poetry collection Killdeer.

Zwicky, an Alberta-born poet now based on Quadra Island in B.C., is vying for the award with Forge, which “explores themes of spiritual catastrophe, transformation and erotic love,” according to the jury citation.

Newfoundland-born Babstock’s collection is Methodist Hatchet, his fourth collection. He was previously shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize with Airstream Land Yacht.

Nominees for the Griffin Prize — one for international poets, one for Canadians — were announced Tuesday in Toronto. The $65,000 international prize is the richest award in the world for a single poetry collection.

"It was a very strong submission list. We had 485 books of poetry which is a long list from 39 different countries. and translations into English from over 19 different languages,so the reach of the prize is extensive now in the international literary community," said Scott Griffin, founder of the prize.

The international nominees:

• Night, by David Harsent, a British poet and Tv scriptwriter who writes crime fiction under the name Jack Curtis and David Lawrence.
• The Chameleon Couch, by New York-based Yusef Komunyakaa, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
• November, by Britain’s Sean O’Brien.
• Sobbing Superpower: Collected poems of Tadeusz Rozewicz, translated from Polish by Joanna Trzeciak.

Warsaw-based poet Rozewicz, now 91, has been an important voice in Poland since his first collection, Anxiety, redefined post-Holocaust poetry.

The winners will be named June 7 in Toronto.