GREAT SILENT BALLAD

Anansi, September 2024

Winner of the 2025 Al & Eurithe Purdy Poetry Prize

Great Silent Ballad, lyric poet A.F. Moritz’s twenty-second volume of poetry, in visionary terms, forwards the assertion that poetry, a primordial reality, is in the current moment both the equal of, and the antidote to, the rest of present-day civilization and its suicidal nature.

Great Silent Ballad wins the 2025 Al and Eurithe Purdy Poetry Prize

Wonderful News! Great Silent Ballad has won the 2025 Al and Eurithe Purdy Poetry Prize! The $10,000 prize, established in 2024 by Eurithe Purdy, honours ...
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Mark your Calendars for the Ottawa and Toronto Anansi Bashes

Come celebrate National Poetry Month in Ottawa and Toronto by attending an Anansi Bash! Ottawa, April 16 Ottawa Writers Festival: Anansi Poetry Bash7:00pm, Wednesday April ...
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Great Silent Ballad Shortlisted for the 2025 Al and Eurithe Purdy Poetry Prize

It is an honour to announce that Great Silent Ballad  is among the five books of poetry shortlisted by the Al Purdy A-Frame Association (APAFA) ...
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Great Silent Ballad Longlisted for the 2025 Al and Eurithe Purdy Poetry Prize

I am delighted to announce that Great Silent Ballad is among the ten books of poetry nominated by the Al Purdy A-Frame Association (APAFA) for ...
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Great Silent Ballad Reviewed in Devour

Great Silent Ballad is featured and twice reviewed in Devour: Art & Lit Canada , Issue 20, March 2025: First, Shane Joseph teases the review ...
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Launch of Reibetanz’s Everyday Light in Toronto

Please join me in celebrating the launch of John Reibetanz’s newest book of poems, Everyday Light (Aelous, 2025). Reibetanz’s collection presents poetic responses to Dutch ...
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AS FAR AS YOU KNOW

Anansi, April 2020

As Far As You Know, acclaimed poet A. F. Moritz’s twentieth collection of poems, begins with two sections entitled “Terrorism” and “Poetry.” The book unfolds in six movements, yet it revolves around and agonizes over the struggle between these two catalyzing concepts, in all the forms they might take, eventually arguing they are the unavoidable conditions and quandary of human life.

THE GARDEN

Gordon Hill Press, April 2021

The Garden by A. F. Moritz is a passionate denunciation of injustice, especially as seen in the violent injustice directed to the African diaspora in North America. Comprised of a long poem, “The Garden in the Midst”, and an in-depth essay, “The Poet’s Garden,” the book … suggests that only the essence of poetry can prove antithetical antidote—if there can even be one—to this human crime and tragedy..

ABOUT

A. F. Moritz has written more than twenty books of poetry. His most recent collections are The Sparrow (2018), As Far As You Know (2020), and Great Silent Ballad (2024). He has received the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Award in Literature of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and the Ingram Merrill Fellowship. His collection, The Sentinel, won the 2009 Griffin Poetry Prize, was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award, and was a Globe and Mail Top 100 of the Year. And Great Silent Ballad received the 2025 Al & Eurithe Purdy Poetry Prize. He lives in Toronto, where he recently served as the city’s sixth Poet Laureate. 

Click the large image below to access a FULL ARTIST’S PORTFOLIO OF A. F. MORITZ or hover over the gallery for individual pages.
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