The great American poet Emily Dickinson once wrote: "That Love is all there is / Is all we know of Love." Dickinson could have written that of poetry itself, an art form that is pervasive and yet also a mystery. And now, thanks to Scott Griffin, it is an art form that is celebrated in Canada to an unprecedented level.
Mr. Griffin, the Canadian industrialist who founded the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry in 2000, announced this week that the prize money for the two annual poetry prizes administered by the trust was doubling to $200,000. The prizes go to the best judged collections by a living Canadian poet and a living poet from another country. This means that, from now on, the Griffin Poetry Prize is worth $75,000 to the winners, while each nominated writer receives $10,000. These are extraordinary amounts in the literary world, let alone in the narrower field of the writing of verse. A quick survey of poetry prizes around the world indicates that the average cheque for winning a poetry award is well under the $10,000 given to a Griffin runner-up. And while there are prizes that are more generous to a single winner (the Wallace Stevens Award in the United States is worth $100,000), there appears to be nothing that comes close to the $200,000 total the Griffin Trust is now going to hand out annually.
Not that this is a competition. Mr. Griffin says the trust doubled the amount "to make a statement that poetry is really important." He has certainly achieved that goal in the mind of anyone who associates money with importance. But he has also accomplished a great deal more. He has demonstrated to the rest of the world that Canada holds poetry to be as critical to its culture as more popular pursuits such as writing a hit song, and he has helped establish Canada as a mature, literate Western nation with an intact soul.
Poetry is really important because it is at once difficult and universal. Its power lies in its ability to express both the inexpressible and the simplest of ideas. As Emily Dickinson wrote in the second half of the four-line poem referenced above: "It is enough, the freight should be / Proportioned to the groove." Scott Griffin deserves Canadians' gratitude for his unparalleled generosity.