The Griffin Poetry Prize has named Psyche Running: Selected Poems, 2005–2022 as the winner of its 2025 International Prize, awarding C$130,000 to U.K. writer and translator Karen Leeder. The announcement was made during the annual Griffin Poetry Prize Readings event in Toronto.
Leeder was recognized for her English translation of more than 100 poems by renowned German poet Durs Grünbein. Published by Seagull Books, Psyche Running presents a broad selection from nearly two decades of Grünbein’s work, highlighting his distinctive lyrical and philosophical voice.
The prize, one of the most prestigious in the world of poetry, allocates 60 percent of the award to the translator and 40 percent to the original author in cases of translated works. Each finalist also receives a C$10,000 honorarium.
Karen Leeder is a professor of German at the University of Oxford and an accomplished scholar, writer, and translator. Grünbein, based in Berlin, is a prolific author of over 25 volumes of poetry and essays and serves as a professor of poetics and aesthetics at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. His poetry previously appeared on the Griffin shortlist in 2006, when Michael Hofmann’s translation Ashes for Breakfast was a finalist.
In their citation, the 2025 Griffin judges — Canadian poet and novelist Anne Michaels, Northern Irish writer Nick Laird, and Polish poet and essayist Tomasz Różycki — praised both the poet and translator: “Durs Grünbein’s Psyche Running is a brilliant overview and selection of a poet who satisfies our hunger to be serious, as again and again he finds himself ‘between words and things.’ Karen Leeder’s adept translations establish a new version of Grünbein in English: universal, lyrical, philosophical.”
The 2025 international shortlist featured three translated works, including posthumous selections from Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén and Slovenian poet Tomaž Šalamun.
Also recognized at the Toronto event was Canadian literary icon Margaret Atwood, who received the previously announced C$25,000 Lifetime Recognition Award.
In May, Dawn Macdonald of Whitehorse was named the winner of the C$10,000 Griffin Canadian First Book Prize for her debut poetry collection Northerny, published by University of Alberta Press.
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