Canada’s prestigious Griffin international prize – which is worth $65,000 - has been awarded to Belarus poet Valzhyna Mort for her collection Music for the Dead and Resurrected, which confronts the legacy of violent death in one family in Belarus.

In these letters to the dead, the poet traces a route of devastation from the Chernobyl fallout and a school system controlled by ideology to the Soviet labour camps and massacres of the second world war. Valzhyna Mort was born in Minsk, Belarus, and now lives in the United States.

Canisia Lubrin won the $65,000 Canada prize for her collection The Dyzgraphxst. Lubrin is a writer, editor and teacher. She was born in St Lucia and now lives in Ontario.

Yusef Komunyakaa received the Griffin prize Lifetime Recognition award. He is an American poet, born in Louisiana, whose subject matter ranges from the black experience through rural Southern life before the Civil Rights era, and his experience as a soldier during the Vietnam war.