2018 T. S. Eliot Prize

The 2018 T. S. Eliot Prize shortlist, which includes five debut collections, one small press, five men, five women, and two Americans, has been announced. Judges Sinéad Morrissey (Chair), Daljit Nagra and Clare Pollard have chosen the shortlist from a record 176 poetry collections submitted by ‘a plethora of poetry publishers’:

Ailbhe Darcy – Insistence (Bloodaxe)Terrance Hayes – American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassins (Penguin)
Zaffar Kunial – Us (Faber & Faber)
Nick Laird – Feel Free (Faber & Faber)
Fiona Moore – The Distal Point (HappenStance)
Sean O’Brien – Europa (Picador)
Phoebe Power – Shrines of Upper Austria (Carcanet)
Richard Scott – Soho (Faber & Faber)
Tracy K Smith – Wade in the Water (Penguin)
Hannah Sullivan – Three Poems (Faber & Faber)

 

The T. READ

Submissions now open for the Four Quartets Prize

The Poetry Society of America has opened submissions for the 2018 Four Quartets Prize. The prize is for a unified and complete sequence of poems published in America in a print or online journal, chapbook, or book in 2018.

The judges this year are Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Carmen Giménez Smith, and Rosanna Warren. READ

2018 T. S. Eliot Lecture with Stephen Pinker, Abbey Theatre, Dublin

The third of five annual lectures inspired by T. S. Eliot’s impact on modern literature will be given by Stephen Pinker, one of the world’s leading authorities on language and the mind and Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard.  The lecture, entitled Pessimism in a World of Progress, will be followed by an interview with Will Self. READ

World premiere of Four Quartets performance

Four Quartets – a performance of dance and music, alongside a reading of the poems – premiered last week at Bard College’s Summerscape festival in New York. This was the first authorised performance based on T. S. Eliot’s sequence of poems with choreography by Pam Tanowitz, music by Kaija Saariaho, images by Brice Marden and a reading of Four Quartets by Kathleen Chalfont. READ

Four Quartets Prize finalists announced

The Poetry Society of America have announced the three finalists for the inaugural Four Quartets Prize, which is to be awarded to a unified and complete sequence of poems published in America in a print or online journal, chapbook, or book in 2016 and/or 2017. READ

Performance of The Waste Land

First performed in 2015 as part of the Beckett Festival, now revived as part of the Mountains to Sea literary festival in 2018 by kind permission of the T. S. Eliot Estate, this performance remains true to the rhythms and references of 1922. READ

Tickets for the T. S. Eliot Prize readings

Get your tickets for the fabulous T. S. Eliot Prize Shortlist Readings, to be hosted by Ian McMillan, with all ten poets expected to read:  Tara Bergin, Caroline Bird, Douglas Dunn, Leontia Flynn, Roddy Lumsden, Michael Symmons Roberts, Robert Minhinnick, James Sheard, Jacqueline Saphra and Ocean VuongIn the Southbank’s Royal Festival Hall at 7pm on Sunday 14 January www.southbankcentre. READ

First broadcast of ‘Practical Cats’

This Christmas sees the 80th anniversary of the first broadcast of a selection of T. S. Eliot’s Practical Cats poems. The poems, which weren’t published until almost two years later, were read by Eliot’s friend, Geoffrey Tandy – a writer, broadcaster and scientist who worked at the Natural History Museum. READ

Four Quartets Prize

The Poetry Society of America have announced The Four Quartets Prize, a new prize presented in partnership with the T.S. Eliot Foundation. The prize is for a unified and complete sequence of poems published in America in a print or online journal, chapbook, or book in 2016 and/or 2017.  READ