Kevin Young has won the 2026 Griffin Poetry Prize.

Last night, at an event in Toronto, the Griffin Poetry Prize—the world’s largest international prize for a single book of poetry published in English—announced its 2026 winner: Kevin Young’s Night Watch. Judges Andrea Cote, Luke Hathaway, and Major Jackson chose Night Watch from a total of 461 books of poetry from 42 different countries.

“In his most experimental volume to date, Kevin Young’s Night Watch crafts a melancholic and haunting collection of sequence poems that layers multiple literary traditions with a dexterity that amounts to a provocation of sonic and epic proportions,” the judges’ citation reads. “Full of quick-witted and improvisational movement, Young’s triadic lines tackle loneliness, grief, and racial legacies that are deeply American. Blues-tinged and hypnotic, Night Watch points to the shadowy edges where the living are “an orchard of scars” and the dead “are writing / a diary / of the living.” Young’s erudite makeover of Dante’s terza rima and his historical examination of the famed Carolina Twins marks the zenith of a book whose resilient, soulful spirit enchants even as it faces its most anguished, spiritual questions.”

Young will take home C$130,000 in prize money; each of the other finalists will be awarded C$10,000.