The T. S. Eliot Prize Copy

2017 T. S. Eliot Prize judges announced

The T. S. Eliot Prize has announced the judges for the 2017 Prize for the best new poetry collection published in the year. W. N. Herbert will be Chair of the judging panel, alongside poets James Lasdun and Helen Mort.

The call for submissions has now gone out, with the submission window closing on 4 August.

The T. S. Eliot Prize Shortlist Readings will take place on Sunday 14 January 2018 in Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall. The shortlist readings are the largest annual poetry event in the UK.

The winner of the 2017 Prize will be announced at the Award Ceremony on Monday 15 January 2018. The winning poet will receive a cheque for £20,000 and the shortlisted poets will be presented with cheques for £1,500.

Last year’s winner was Jackself by Jacob Polley (Picador). The judges were Ruth Padel (Chair), Julia Copus and Alan Gillis.

2016 T. S. Eliot Prize Winner

Disturbing tale of lost innocence wins world’s most prestigious poetry prize.

The T. S. Eliot Foundation is delighted to announce that this year’s winner of the 2016 T. S. Eliot Prize is Jacob Polley for his remarkable new collection Jackself.

After months of reading and deliberation, Judges Ruth Padel (Chair), Julia Copus and Alan Gillis chose the winner from a strong shortlist of six women and four men.

Chair Ruth Padel said:

All three judges were agonised by choosing between such brilliant books. But the winning collection, Jacob Polley’s Jackself, is a firework of a book; inventive, exciting and outstanding in its imaginative range and depth of feeling.

Jacob Polley was born in Carlisle in 1975. He is the author of four poetry collections, The Brink (2003), Little Gods (2006), The Havocs (2012) and Jackself (2016), all published by Picador. He received an Eric Gregory Award in 2002, and both The Brink and The Havocs were shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. In 2004, he was named one of the ‘Next Generation’ of the twenty best new poets in Britain. His first novel, Talk of the Town, a demotic and funny coming-of-age murder mystery, won the 2010 Somerset Maugham Award. He now lives in St Andrews and works in Newcastle.

Ruth Padel formally announced that Jacob Polley was the winner at the

T. S. Eliot Prize Award Ceremony in the Wallace Collection on Monday 16th January. The winner was presented with a cheque for £20,000 and each shortlisted poet received a cheque for £1,500 in recognition of their achievement in winning a place on the most prestigious shortlist in UK poetry.

The award ceremony was preceded by the T. S. Eliot Prize Readings on Sunday 16th January, held in the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall. All ten poets read to a packed-out audience in a remarkable display of the strength and range of British poetry.

New home for the T. S. Eliot Prize

The T. S. Eliot Foundation has taken over the running of the T. S. Eliot Prize from the Poetry Book Society, the charity which established the Prize in 1993 and ran it for twenty-three years. The PBS membership and club has been transferred to Inpress Ltd.

The T. S. Eliot Foundation, a recently established charity, will give the prize money and be the sole supporter of the Prize. The Foundation has appointed Chris Holifield Director of the T. S. Eliot Prize.

The call for submissions

The call for submissions for the 2016 Prize has now been sent out to poetry publishers in the UK and Ireland. Submissions may only be made by publishers and self-published work is not eligible.

Guidelines and Eligibility

Last Year’s Winner

The Poetry Book Society was delighted to announce in January 2016 that the winner of the 2015 T. S. Eliot Prize was Sarah Howe for her debut collection Loop of Jade, an intimate exploration of her Anglo-Chinese heritage though her journeys to Hong Kong to discover her roots. This was the first time a debut collection had won the prize.