Griffin Poetry Prize

Literature

Kevin Young’s Blues, Dante’s Measure, and the Weight of What Stays

Kevin Young won the 2026 Griffin Poetry Prize for Night Watch — a collection the judges called his most experimental yet, Blues-tinged and Dante-structured, examining grief and racial legacies in deeply American language.

Literature

Kevin Young Wins the World's Richest Poetry Prize. Now, Does Anyone Care?

Kevin Young's Night Watch has won the 2026 Griffin Poetry Prize, the world's richest poetry award at C$130,000. It is a formally demanding, blues-inflected collection — one that deserves readers who do not need a prize to find it.