This week, in our poetry news roundup, we look at the Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Recognition Award Winner and the Pulitzer Prize Poetry Award.

Margaret Atwood Named as Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Recognition Award Winner

Renowned poet and author Margaret Atwood has been named the recipient of this year’s Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Recognition Award.

This is an award given on a periodical basis, and in the past, it has been awarded to non-Canadian writers rather than those from Canada. However, this year the spotlight is firmly on Atwood, a Toronto-based author, as the shortlist for the Griffin Poetry Prize, which is worth $130,000. The list contains no finalists from Canada, the first time this has happened in the 25 years since the prize began.

The shortlisted collections for 2025 have been written by poets and translators from Europe, Cuba, and the US. Until 2023, Griffin awarded separate prizes for international and Canadian entrants. However, they decided to merge this into one single prize that is open to all poets.

The winner of this year’s Griffin Poetry Prize will be announced at a poetry reading in Toronto on June 4th. During this event, Atwood will be interviewed by Carolyn Forche, an American poet.

Atwood earned the honour following the publication in 2024 of “Paper Boat,” a collection of her poetry, both new and old, from 1961 to 2023. Prior to this, in 2020, she published “Dearly,” her first poetry collection in over a decade. She is also an acclaimed author, having written “The Handmaid’s Tale,” the sequel to which won the Booker Prize.

Pulitzer Prize for Poetry Awarded to Marie Howe

Marie Howe, Columbia University School of the Arts alumna ’83, has been named the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry winner. Her winning collection, “New and Selected Poems,” has been honoured as

The book, published in 2024, draws poems from Howe’s four decades of work, some of which have been published before and others that are completely new. The poems included in the collection include an elegy she wrote to her brother, who died in 1989 of AIDS, and “Magdalene,” which was a National Book Award longlisted entry.

The collection has received much praise since its writing, with critics saying it includes some of Howe’s truest poems.

The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry has a $15,000 award, and this year’s other finalists were Danez Smith for “Bluff” and Jennifer Chang for “An Authentic Life.”

Howe has been at Columbia University School of the Arts for many years. She gained her MFA in 1983 when she studied with Stanley Kunitz, a renowned poet. Following her graduation, her debut poetry collection was selected in 1987 by Margaret Atwood in an Open Competition of the National Poetry Series.

From 2012 to 2016, she served as the Poet Laureate of New York State. In 2018, she became the Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. During her career, she has also won a number of very prestigious awards.