The T. S. Eliot Foundation is delighted to announce the winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize 2025 is Karen Solie for Wellwater, published by Picador Poetry.
Chair Michael Hofmann said:
In Karen Solie we have an outstanding winner. The poems of Wellwater come from the whole of an adventurously lived life. They hold the two sentiments, The world is a beautiful place / The world is a terrible place, in perfect equipoise. They offer no happy endings, no salvation in past or future, in epiphany or private happiness. And yet they are anything but grim, with an ironic humour that plays over our increasingly euphemism-hungry culture.
Judges Michael Hofmann (Chair), Patience Agbabi and Niall Campbell chose the T. S. Eliot Prize 2025 Shortlist from 177 poetry collections submitted by 64 British and Irish publishers. The Shortlist comprised seasoned poets, two debuts, two second collections, four previously shortlisted poets and a former winner. Poets hail from the UK, Ireland, St Lucia, Canada and the USA, and publishers include both large, long-established and smaller independent presses.
Karen Solie grew up in southwest Saskatchewan, Canada. Wellwater (Picador Poetry) is her sixth collection. She has won the Dorothy Livesay Award, Pat Lowther Award, Trillium Poetry Prize, the Griffin Prize, and was joint winner of the 2025 Forward Prize for Best Collection. She has been shortlisted for the Derek Walcott Prize and the T. S. Eliot Prize. A 2023 Guggenheim Fellow, Karen Solie teaches for half of the year at the University of St Andrews in Scotland and lives the rest of time in Canada.
The judges announced the winner on Monday 19 January at the award ceremony held at the Wallace Collection, London. On Sunday 18 January the shortlisted poets read at the Royal Festival Hall, London; this is the largest annual poetry event in the UK. An audio version of the Readings will be available on the T. S. Eliot Prize YouTube channel shortly.
Karen Solie is awarded £25,000 as the winner of the Prize, presented by the T. S. Eliot Foundation. Each shortlisted poet also receives £1,500 in recognition of their achievement in winning a place on the most prestigious shortlist in UK poetry.
You can view videos of Karen’s brilliant readings from Wellwater and hear her talking about her work on the T. S. Eliot Prize website and YouTube channel.
