The T. S. Eliot Prize 2022

Fiona Benson has previously published two collections, both of which were shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize: Bright Travellers, which won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry’s First Collection Poetry Prize; and Vertigo & Ghost, which was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and won both the Roehampton Poetry Prize and the Forward Prize for Best Collection. She lives in Devon with her husband and their two daughters. Photo: Jessica Farmer

Jemma Borg won the inaugural Ginkgo Prize in 2018 and The Rialto/RSPB Nature and Place Competition in 2017. Her poems have appeared in the TLS, The Poetry Review and Oxford Poetry, and in the anthologies Out of Time (Valley Press, 2021) and Places of Poetry (Oneworld, 2020). Her first collection, The Illuminated World (Eyewear, 2014), won The Stare’s Nest Fledgling Award and the New Writing Ventures Award for Poetry. Her second collection, Wilder (Pavilion / Liverpool University Press, 2022), was among the winners of the 2022 Laurel Prize, awarded by the Poet Laureate Simon Armitage and through the Poetry School. Jemma was a zoologist and evolutionary geneticist before working in scientific research management in the voluntary sector and in science publishing. She lives in East Sussex with her family. Photo: Charlotte Knee

Victoria Adukwei Bulley is a poet, writer and artist. An alumna of the Barbican Young Poets and recipient of an Eric Gregory Award, Victoria has held residencies in the US, Brazil, and at the V&A Museum, London. Her debut pamphlet, Girl B, was published by the African Poetry Book Fund in 2017. She is the recipient of a Techne scholarship for doctoral research at Royal Holloway, University of London. Quiet is Victoria’s debut collection. Photo: Tim Pulford-Cutting

Philip Gross was born in Cornwall, the son of an Estonian wartime refugee. He has lived in Plymouth, Bristol and South Wales, where he was Professor of Creative Writing at Glamorgan University (USW). His twenty-seventh collection, The Thirteenth Angel, is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and follows eleven previous books with Bloodaxe, including Between the Islands (2020); A Bright Acoustic (2017); Love Songs of Carbon (2015), winner of the Roland Mathias Poetry Award and a Poetry Book Society Recommendation; Deep Field (2011), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation; The Water Table (2009), winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize 2009; and Changes of Address: Poems 1980-1998 (2001). He regularly collaborates with other artists, photographers and writers; he also writes poetry for young people – The All-Nite Café won the Signal Award 1994, and Off Road to Everywhere won the CLPE Award 2011. He received a Cholmondeley Award in 2017. Photo: Stephen Morris

Anthony Joseph was born in Trinidad. He is a poet, novelist, academic and musician. He holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Goldsmiths University and is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at King’s College London. He was the Colm Tóibín Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Liverpool in 2018 and was awarded a Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship 2019/20. Anthony is the author of five poetry collections: Desafinado, Teragaton, Bird Head Son, Rubber Orchestras and, most recently, Sonnets for Albert, published by Bloomsbury. He has also written three novels including: The African Origins of UFOs; Kitch: A Fictional Biography of a Calypso Icon, which was shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, the Royal Society of Literature’s Encore Award and longlisted for the 2019 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature; and The Frequency of Magic. As a musician he has released eight critically acclaimed albums. Anthony lives in London. Photo: Naomi Woddis

Zaffar Kunial was born in Birmingham and lives in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire. In 2011 he won third prize in the National Poetry Competition with ‘Hill Speak’. In 2014, he published a pamphlet in the Faber New Poets series, was awarded The Poetry Society’s Geoffrey Dearmer Prize and was Poet-in-Residence at the Wordsworth Trust. His debut collection, Us (Faber, 2018), was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and other awards. Six, his pamphlet of cricket poems, coinciding with a residency at the Oval, was published in 2019. He was a 2022 recipient of the Yale University Windham-Campbell Prize. England’s Green is his second collection.

Mark Pajak was born in Merseyside in 1987 and currently lives in Scotland. His work has received a Northern Writers’ Award, a Society of Authors’ Grant, an Eric Gregory Award and a UNESCO international writing residency. He is a past recipient of the Bridport Prize and has three times been included in the National Poetry Competition winners list. Slide is Mark’s debut collection. Photo: Robert Peet

James Conor Patterson is from Newry in the north of Ireland and currently lives in London. He won an Eric Gregory Award for bandit country in 2019 and fragments and versions of the poems appeared in publications including Magma, The Moth, New Statesman, Poetry Ireland Review, The Poetry Review, The Stinging Fly, Poetry London and The Tangerine. A selection of James’s poems was recently shortlisted for The White Review Poet’s Prize. His journalism and non-fiction have been widely published in the Guardian, i-D and The Irish Times among others. He is editor of the anthology The New Frontier: Reflections from the Irish Border, published by New Island. bandit country is James’s debut collection. Photo: Aimée Walsh

Denise Saul lives in Surrey. She is the author of two pamphlets: White Narcissi (flipped eye, 2007), a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice; and House of Blue (Rack Press, 2012), a PBS Pamphlet Recommendation. She is a past winner of The Poetry Society’s Geoffrey Dearmer Prize and a Fellow of The Complete Works. Denise holds a PhD in Creative Writing (poetry) from the University of Roehampton. She received an ACE Grant for the Arts Award for the delivery of her video poem collaborative project, Silent Room: A Journey of Language. Her project can be found at silent-room.net. The Room Between Us is Denise’s debut collection. Photo: Karolina Heller

Yomi Ṣode is an award-winning Nigerian British writer and lives in London. He was a 2019/20 Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellow and was shortlisted for the Brunel International African Poetry Prize 2021. His acclaimed one-man show COAT toured nationally to sold-out audiences, including at the Brighton Festival, Roundhouse Camden and Battersea Arts Centre. In 2020 his libretto Remnants, written in collaboration with award-winning composer James B. Wilson and performed with Chineke! Orchestra, premiered on BBC Radio 3. In 2021, his play and breathe… premiered at the Almeida Theatre, London. Manorism is his debut collection. Photo: Jolade Olusanya