TORONTO, June 15, 2013 (WAFA) – Palestinian poet Ghassan Zaqtan was this year’s international winner of the Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize, a news statement by the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry said on Thursday.

Zaqtan, who received a 65,000 Canadian dollars prize, was recognized for his poem Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me, and Other Poems, translated from the Arabic by Fady Joudah.

Scott Griffin, founder of the prize, presented the 2013 Griffin Poetry Prize to Zaqtan and Joudah during ceremony attended by some 400 invited guests at Corus Quay – a new venue featuring a five-story bio-wall and a wall of glass with doors opening onto a lakefront promenade.

The Griffin Poetry Prize was founded in 2000 to serve and encourage excellence in poetry, said the organization. The prize is for first edition books of poetry written in, or translated into, English and submitted from anywhere in the world.

The 2013 Griffin Poetry Prize shortlist features collections by four international and three Canadian poets:

David McFadden’s What’s the Score was the Canadian winner of the award.

M.S.