Vancouver poet and translator George McWhirter makes shortlist for $130K Griffin Poetry Prize

(Mark Van Mannen)Canadian translator George McWhirter has made the shortlist for the Griffin Poetry Prize.

It describes meetings with mythical animals, family ghosts, writers and Mexico's oppressed to work toward spiritual transformation.

" Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence brings poet-translator George McWhirter's adept English to the service of a great world-poet, Homero Aridjis," said the jury in a press statement.

"The book's enchanting variety of tones and subjects expresses a rounded human being engaged with our total experience, from the familial to the political, from bodily sensations to dream, vision, philosophic thought, and history, from hope to foreboding.

Nêhiyaw writer Emily Riddle won the Canadian First Book Prize for her debut poetry collection The Big Melt.

Other past Canadian winners include Tolu Oloruntoba, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Anne Carson, Roo Borson, Dionne Brand and Jordan Abel.