Words At Large

(Photo credit: Joy von Tiedemann) Robin Blaser continues to reap rewards for an impressive career in poetry. This week he became the 2008 Canadian recipient of the Griffin Poetry Prize, the world’s most lucrative poetry award for a single book.

Blaser won for his collection The Holy Forest: Collected Poems of Robin Blaser (University of California Press), which includes poems written over 50 years. He accepted the $50,000 prize at a gala event in Toronto on Wednesday, June 4, and CBC Radio’s Sharon Farrell spoke with him just after the announcement was made.

Born in the U.S. in 1925, Blaser became part of the San Francisco Renaissance movement after the war. He moved to Canada in 1966 to teach at the newly opened Simon Fraser University. Now 83, he only recently retired as professor emeritus.

Alongside his writing and teaching, Blaser has mentored and influenced many younger poets in Canada. Among other honours, he has received the Order of Canada, as well as the 2006 inaugural Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry’s Lifetime Recognition Award.

The Griffin Poetry Prize was founded by businessman Scott Griffin eight years ago, and has grown by leaps and bounds. This year, 509 books were submitted from 31 countries. The 2008 judges were George Bowering (Vancouver), James Lasdun (Woodstock, New York) and Pura López-Colomé (Cuernavaca, Mexico).

This year, the Griffin Poetry Prize for an international book published in English went to another poet with a long and illustrious career: American John Ashbery. In addition, Korean poet Ko Un was honoured with the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry’s third Lifetime Recognition Award at a reading event the previous evening.

Sharon Farrell began her interview with Robin Blaser by asking how it felt to win this prize after having received the Lifetime Recognition Award.

Original interview for Words at Large. [runs 8:32]