Toronto’s Ken Babstock wipes away tears as he accepts Griffin poetry prize

TORONTO – Toronto’s Ken Babstock wiped away tears Thursday night as he accepted the $65,000 Griffin poetry prize, widely considered the world’s richest award of its kind.

He thanked his wife, Laura, and four-year-old son, Samuel, while ruefully expressing a wish that the boy not follow in his father’s footsteps.

“I hope you will read and love poetry. I hope you never write it. Get a real job,” said Babstock, 42, admitting that his career choice has been a tough slog at times.

The Newfoundland-born, Ottawa Valley-raised wordsmith also saluted the Griffin jurors, who read 481 books of poetry from 37 countries, including 19 translations.

“I thank you for all that madness and hard work,” said Babstock, who won for his collection “Methodist Hatchet” (House of Anansi Press).

Britain’s David Harsent, meanwhile, took home the international Griffin prize, also worth $65,000, for “Night” (Faber and Faber).

This is the 12th year for the lucrative award, created by businessman Scott Griffin along with trustees including Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje.

Thursday’s gala featured a Mexican theme, complete with a mariachi band greeting guests at the door before a dinner that included veal striploin and chili hot chocolate with churros. In addition to Atwood and Ondaatje, attendees included former media baron Conrad Black, his wife Barbara Amiel Black and former governor general Adrienne Clarkson.

There was also some added star power from Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney, who received the Griffin’s lifetime achievement award Wednesday night and had high praise for the prize and its founder.

“He has his own personal commitment and passion to poetry and I just think that’s worth saluting,” Heaney, 73, said of Scott Griffin.

Heaney said the Griffin prize helps readers “pay attention to what is there.”

Babstock beat out Phil Hall of Perth, Ont., for “Killdeer” (BookThug), which won a Governor General’s Literary Award in November, and Alberta native Jan Zwicky for “Forge” (Gaspereau Press).

The other international Griffin finalists were: British poet Sean O’Brien for “November” (Picador); “The Chameleon Couch,” by New York’s Yusef Komunyakaa (Farrar, Straus and Giroux); and “Sobbing Superpower: Selected Poems of Tadeusz Rozewicz” (W.W. Norton & Company), written by Poland’s Tadeusz Rozewicz and translated by Joanna Trzeciak.

Heaney said he believes the art of poetry has survived and is “in good condition,” pointing to the number of books of poetry perused by this year’s judging panel, which consisted of Heather McHugh, David O’Meara and Fiona Sampson.

Harsent, 69, thanked those judges, along with the Griffin trust and trustees.

“You’re not going to get a speech because I don’t have a speech,” he said.

“But perhaps I should say that, given that poetry is probably extremely high on the list of the world’s unnecessary events, an event like the Griffin prize — the support and what it brings to poetry — is, to give you a quote: ‘A good deed in a naughty world.'”

For his part, Babstock mused on the readers who have embraced his words.

“You don’t know how desperately we poets are tied to you,” he said.

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