C.D. Wright, a Brown University professor, is competing for one of the world’s biggest poetry awards. Her book, Rising, Falling, Hovering, was “written with merciless love” according to the judges.

The Providence Journal / Bob Thayer

On Tuesday, C.D. Wright travels to Toronto, again. Once more, she’ll compete with words.

“I didn’t win before,” says the Barrington resident and Brown professor of English. “But they have a really great party, a really great party. So I’m a good loser, though I would prefer to win.”

For the second time in six years, Wright is a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize. This is Canada’s biggest poetry competition, and one of the biggest in the world. The two winners — one in the Canadian division and one in the international division — will each receive $45,000. To be a contender, you had to have published a book of poetry the previous year. Now, from a field of 485 books, the judges have reduced the field to seven: three Canadian poets, and four international poets.

Tuesday night, Wright and the other poet finalists will participate in a party, with each giving a reading. Wednesday night the winners will be announced.

“I think even a poet who is a bad reader but whose work you admire is worth hearing at least once. It’s really different to have the poem embodied. I think most people like that experience,” Wright said.

That appears to be true. Tickets for the Tuesday night party, which can accommodate 850, have sold out.

Wright, 60, has already won many poetry awards, including a grant from the Governor’s Arts Awards and the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts; the Witter Bynner Prize for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts; a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation; and a MacArthur “genius” grant of $500,000.

“I don’t think a competition does that much for the art of poetry. It does something for those individual poets, and eventually that wears off,” she said.

The MacArthur money, which Wright received in 2004, she has used to pay for her son’s college tuition, to travel and to take time to write, including her 13th book, Rising, Falling, Hovering, which was published last year and is the finalist for the Griffin prize.

In their assessment of Wright’s latest book, the Griffin judges said that it “reminds us what poetry is for. This is poetry as white phosphorous, written with merciless love and depthless anger.”

Rising, Falling, Hovering is Wright’s response to current events, notably America’s relationship with Mexico, and America’s war in Iraq.

“I would say it is my most ferocious book. I had one book that I think came from my joy within, of which I had a limited supply. This book was fueled by pain and rage, and trying to reconcile things and making peace within myself.”

The other finalists in the international division of the Griffin Poetry Prize are: Derek Mahon of Ireland; Dean Young of California and Iowa; and the late Mick Imlah of Great Britain who died in January of ALS at 52.

For any poet, Wright say, recognition and, possibly, a monetary reward for their poetry is a big deal.

“Money from poetry is something that happens indirectly, and it’s not money that can be counted on. There are a lot of talented poets who are under-recognized and have bread-and-butter issues.”

People who love poetry are passionate about their craft, Wright says. That, she says, is why poets are willing to spend the time and effort in solitude on their poetry, and why they’re so eager to come together to celebrate it, as they will Tuesday night in the MacMillan Theatre in Toronto.

“It’s in an incredible place, and it’s this gala with lots of fabulous writers. It’s fun. I’ll go some distance to have some fun.”

brourke@projo.com