Griffin Poetry Prize finalist Susan Musgrave explores life's beauty and sorrow
'Poetry connects me with people'
Renowned Canadian poet and writer Susan Musgrave's most recent poetry collection Exculpatory Lilies is a meditation on grief, but it is also about the goodness in the world.
It is dedicated to her husband and two daughters — Musgrave lost her husband in 2018 and her younger daughter in 2021. In Exculpatory Lilies, Musgraves explores the expansive grief following both losses, but also the natural world and the connection between the two, searching for the beauty in the emotional highs and lows of life.
Split into five sections, Musgrave shared via email to CBC Books that the sections signified "Love, Grief, Marriage, Sex and Death," and that writing the book was like "trying to imagine thirst when you are drowning."
The poems also go through different generations of Musgrave's family — there are poems about her grandparents, parents, partner, children and grandchildren.
"Family is everyone you don't choose but can't live without. Especially when they are gone, Musgrave said.
A subject that is woven through this collection is about how one deals with a loved one's addiction, and Musgrave said in a interview with Margaret Gallagher on North by Northwest that she writes poetry for its ability to create connection — especially in the "places that we don't necessarily want to visit all the time because they hurt."
However, "writing about these sad themes" connects with people who may be going through the same things.
When Musgrave reads the poems from Exculpatory Lilies, she says that she "gets lines of people that come and talk to [her] about their child and what's going on in their lives. Poetry for me connects me with people."
Exculpatory Lilies is shortlisted for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Prize, an annual prize to raise the profile of poets and poetry in Canada, and internationally. The $130,000 prize currently stands as the world's largest international prize for a single book of poetry written in, or translated into English.
"The sheer humanity and gift to show our fragile, broken selves is nothing less than prayer, as spoken in Musgrave's Exculpatory Lilies. That she brings us to the sacred ground of loss and grief, and then lifts us toward our own humility is a ceremony. A ceremony wherein we must bow down our heads to the fragility of all we know, the darkness and light we all must carry," he prize's jury said in a statement of Musgrave's book.
The 2023 Griffin Poetry Prize winner will be announced on June 7 at Koerner Hall in Toronto. The gala event will also feature readings from all the finalists before the big reveal.
Musgrave has received awards for poetry, fiction, nonfiction, personal essay, children's writing and for her work as an editor. She has published many books, including Love You More, More Blueberries and Kiss, Tickle, Cuddle, Hug. In 1996, Musgrave won the CBC Literary Award for Poetry.
She lives on the archipelago of Haida Gwaii, and her experiences on the islands inspired her cookbook A Taste of Haida Gwaii.
