Jeramy Dodd's Crabwise to the Hounds (Coach House Books, Fall 2008) has been nominated for the 2009 Griffin Poetry Prize. In a release dated April 7, 2009, and distributed at the Griffin Poetry Prize Shorlist Announcement breakfast, Crabwise to the Hounds was among three titles selected by the judges.

The judges for this year's prize are: Saskia Hamilton (United States), Dennis O'Driscoll (Ireland), and Michael Redhill (Canada). According to the release, the judges "each read 485 books of poetry, including 33 translations, received from 32 countries around the globe."

The seven finalists will be invited to read in Toronto at the MacMillan Theatre on Tuesday, June 2, 2009. The winners, who will receive $50,000 each, will be announced the next day, on Wednesday, June 3, 2009.

Crabwise to the Hounds, a debut collection from 2007 CBC Literary Award winner for poetry Jeramy Dodds, features cameos by jackalopes, Glenn Gould, homemade spaceships and Carl Linnaeus. These poems are astonishing for their technical agility and their restless inventiveness. There's an elegance here that matches Dodd's impulse to challenge the reader with fresh metaphor and remarkable phrasing; the formal ambitions of many of the poems in Crabwise to the Hounds are balanced by an inclination toward wordplay and bright musicality.