New Yorker poetry editor Kevin Young wins Griffin Poetry Prize

TORONTO — Kevin Young, the poetry editor of the New Yorker, has won the $130,000 Griffin Poetry Prize for his collection “Night Watch.”

Young took home the award at a poetry reading at Toronto’s Koerner Hall on Wednesday night.

Jurors call the collection his most experimental so far and praise it as “melancholic and haunting,” tackling loneliness, grief and “racial legacies that are deeply American.”

Young has written 16 books of poetry and prose, and hosts the New Yorker’s “Poetry Podcast.”

The other poets shortlisted for the prize were Daniel Borzutzky and his co-translator Alec Schumacher for “Bodies Found in Various Places,” Gbenga Adesina for “Death Does Not End at the Sea,” Aracelis Girmay for “Green of All Heads” and Ange Mlinko for “Foxglovewise.”

The Griffin Poetry Prize is the largest literary award for a single collection of poetry written in or translated into English.

Also on Wednesday, Joseph Kidney received the $10,000 Canadian First Book Prize for his collection “Devotional Forensics.”

Prize benefactor Scott Griffin presented Chilean poet Raúl Zurita with the $25,000 lifetime recognition award.

Zurita is hailed as one of Latin America’s most celebrated poets, who used his art as a form of political resistance during Chile’s 17-year military dictatorship.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 3, 2026.