Over the past few years, you might have spotted a new kind of video appearing on the T. S. Eliot Prize YouTube channel and social media feeds. Appearing in December, these videos offer new perspectives on the ten titles shortlisted for that year’s T. S. Eliot Prize, voiced passionately and critically by a group of 18–25-year-olds.
The videos are the creations of emerging reviewers mentored through the Young Critics Scheme, a collaborative project developed by the T. S. Eliot Prize and The Poetry Society’s Young Poets Network. Since 2022, the scheme has fostered a new generation of literature reviewers and encouraged wider and deeper engagement with the T. S. Eliot Prize Shortlist.
Every year, ten young reviewers in the UK and Ireland take part in four online masterclasses on reviewing poetry and making videos. They receive copies of all ten shortlisted collections, two tickets to the T. S. Eliot Prize Shortlist Readings at the Southbank Centre, London, and support from their peers and the organisations involved.
The programme stands on the shoulders of the T. S. Eliot Prize’s Shadowing Scheme, which was run by the Prize (then under the auspices of the Poetry Book Society) and the English and Media Centre. That programme invited GCSE and A Level students to submit written reviews and poems in response to the Shortlist, and ran between 2006 and 2015. The Young Critics Scheme goes one step further, mentoring the young writers and offering a community and network.
What has the Young Critics Scheme achieved?
So far, thirty Young Critics have taken part in the scheme, producing an outstanding array of video reviews. You’ll find classic straight-to-video vlog-style videos – like Priyanka Moorjani’s review of Raymond Antrobus’s Signs, Music, which offers a reading of the book as a Homeric epic of parenthood with charm and wit. Other critics, like Eira Murphy reviewing Fierce Elegy by Peter Gizzi, have created meditative short films that evoke their chosen collection’s mood, with their review as the soundtrack. Still other reviewers combine both styles, like Oliver Cooney’s review of Sharon Olds’ Balladz.
‘The scheme has had a profound effect on me – it gave me the confidence and sense of community among like-minded young writers that bolstered me to reconnect with my writing practice and to submit and edit work,’ writes 2023 Young Critic Natalie Perman. Since taking part in the scheme, more than half of the first twenty Young Critics have reviewed for The Poetry Review, Poetry London, Oxford Poetry, Magma, The Skinny, Interpret and many other publications. Young Critic Gabrielle Tse writes, ‘The scheme has given me the confidence to continue pursuing literature as a career’, and indeed many of the alumni have taken part in the Forward Prize Young Poets Summit, judged the Poetry Foundation Poetry Magazine Prizes, used their new video skills as part of their PhDs and jobs, and more.
The reviews have reached a wide audience and have been favourably received by the poetry community: altogether, the videos have reached over 110,000 people across the T. S. Eliot Prize and The Poetry Society YouTube, Instagram and TikTok channels. 2024’s reviews were also turned into mini podcasts by The Poetry Society and played over 2,000 times – look out for more this year.
The reviewers have also brought fresh critical thinking to our shortlisted poets’ collections. Abigail Parry (shortlisted in 2023 for I Think We’re Alone Now) wrote of Gabrielle Tse’s review that ‘it’s straight-up one of the most acute and careful responses anyone’s offered to something I’ve written. And some of the best visual language I’ve seen in a video essay. Seriously, it’s a gift.’ Hannah Copley (shortlisted in 2024 for Lapwing) said, ‘my mum says [Young Critic Joe Wright] talks about my own book far better than I do’, while Carl Phillips (shortlisted in 2024 for Scattered Snows, to the North) said, ‘I think the best criticism always allows me to see my own work in a new way, and that is exactly what Ahana [Banerji] has achieved here.’
Look out for details of the Young Critics Scheme 2025 cohort, announced online in September.
Alumni
See our news post about the 2022 Young Critics cohort here.
See our news post announcing the 2023 Young Critics cohort here.
See our news post announcing the 2024 Young Critics cohort here.
