Scott Griffin addresses backlash over poetry prize changes, seeks community input

TORONTO — A yearslong conflict in Canadian poetry — a quiet mutiny waged in Instagram comments and Substack posts — could soon be resolved by way of a survey and a town hall.

The scene’s top benefactor, the publisher-philanthropist Scott Griffin, is re-evaluating a controversial change he announced in 2022 to the poetry prize that bears his name. As a result, he’s launching a survey to gather feedback and a town hall where poets and poetry lovers can workshop a solution.

At issue is Griffin’s decision to merge the two categories of the Griffin Poetry Prize, one for an international poet and one for a Canadian, previously each worth $65,000, into a single $130,000 pot. It made the award the largest of its kind, and came with other changes meant to bolster support specifically for homegrown poets, including a $10,000 prize for a Canadian’s first book of poetry.

The backlash was swift and as loud as poets generally get, but it was also sustained. Early critics include Alicia Elliott and rob mclennan. Last year was the first time no Canadians made the five-book short list for the prize. Then last month, when the 2026 long list was announced, Canadians were shut out there too.

The poet Kim Fahner posted on Substack — an online publishing platform and social media site favoured by writers — that it was “brutal to see one more vehicle that might elevate our art as Canadian poets just sort of disappear.”

A couple weeks later, Griffin announced he had heard the feedback. Survey submissions are open until April 25, with a town hall to be scheduled later.

Griffin said it’s too early to go into specifics about the feedback he’s received, but he spoke to The Canadian Press about the decision to open the floor for discussion and re-evaluate the prize format. This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

CP: What was the impetus for launching a survey and proposing a town hall?

Scott Griffin: If you cover social media, you’ll see that there was a certain amount of pushback when we changed the format of the prize or prizes concerning the Griffin Poetry Prize. And it was enough that we felt that really we should establish some dialogue with the poetry community and try to work out something that they felt served them better than the existing format. So the purpose of this, of course, is to listen to what they have to say and then respond as opposed to trying to say, well, this is the way it is, as it were.

CP: It’s been three years since the change came into effect, and the pushback was immediate, so why act now?

SG: It became clear to us that the community, in spite of the fact that a Canadian won one of those three years, and another Canadian was shortlisted — which I think in one respect argued for the change — but clearly there was a big segment of the poetry community that felt they had lost their voice in terms of the Griffin Poetry Prize. And that’s too bad. So then the question is, you know, what are the recommended changes that might satisfy that? The whole purpose of reaching out was to listen and encourage any recommendations that people might have.

CP: Was there a change, this year, to the amount or the tone of the feedback that you received?

SG: I don’t think so. Well, in the past, there has been a Canadian in the long list, which is ten poets. And this is the first year that there wasn’t a Canadian that made it into the long list. I don’t know whether you can blame the prize on that. There are a lot of countries and a lot of poets that have submitted work. So one cannot expect to be to on a list every year, but the fact that there was no Canadian on the long list, I think sort of rubbed salt in the wound, as it were.

CP: Did the rise in nationalism and the “Elbows Up” movement over the last 18 months change your thinking about getting rid of the Canada-specific Griffin Poetry Prize?

SG: No, I don’t think so. The whole point of the Griffin Poetry Prize is to highlight poetry and to get away from the political nationalism that arises from this. Everything has a political overtone, it seems to me, particularly these days. The whole driving force of the Griffin Poetry Prize was to highlight poetry regardless of where it comes from, and the better the poetry, the more it should be of interest, hopefully, to everybody, including Canadians. That’s been, always, our central drive.

CP: What options are you considering in terms of a future format for the prize?

SG: The whole point is to listen and take into account the recommendations and to be open-minded. We truly want to arrive at something that the Canadian poetry community sees as being important to Canada and to Canadian poets or Canadian poetry. We’re going to be very open. I think when we get into the town hall, we will listen to what recommendations are and if there is a recommended solution, we’ll point out the difficulties or complications of the recommendation, if there are any that we see. Then we will go from the town hall recommendations, which we will gather and then we will discuss this in detail with the trustees and come out with a recommendation.

CP: Do you have any regrets about not doing a consultation before making the first change?

SG: No, I don’t think so. I was a little surprised because if we look at the three years, we’ve had one Canadian winner, which is pretty impressive, and we’ve had a second Canadian, a different Canadian, shortlisted. We felt that bringing an international prize that’s really important to Canada was something that people would endorse. And some of the comments coming in so far do say exactly that.

CP: Did the change to the prize and making it one big pot attract the sort of international attention or raise the profile of the prize in the way you’d hoped?

SG: I think so. We’ve increased the number of publishers that submit quite dramatically. And ironically, the number of Canadian publishers has remained almost the same. I don’t have any regrets about that, but I do want to try and be open to whether there is some way to satisfy both worlds.

CP: What has the emotional experience been like for you, facing this criticism from some portions of the poetry community?

SG: Well, I’m old enough to know that these things… it’s a little like water off a duck’s back. You could get so wound up about things that you go crazy. And, you know, we actually do a lot for Canadian poetry. If you get into the Poetry In Voice (a charity that encourages students to read, write and recite poetry, including through a recitation competition) there are over 2,000 schools involved in every province in Canada, bilingual. And the students are going to be the future readership of poetry. I’m not sure that people realize that we do quite a bit for poetry in other ways. We bring poets into the classroom. We pay them a stipend and we pay their expenses.

I have no feelings that we don’t do enough for poetry, but it would be nice to come to some kind of recommendation that people think makes a real step in supporting Canadian poetry.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 17, 2026.