As the T. S. Eliot Prize celebrates its 30th year, the T. S. Eliot Foundation is delighted to announce the judges for the 2023 Prize: the panel will be chaired by Paul Muldoon, alongside Sasha Dugdale and Denise Saul. 

The judges will be looking for the best new poetry collection written in English and published in 2023. The Prize is unique in that entrants are judged by their peers; the panel always consists of established poets.  

Paul Muldoon said: 

It’s an honour to chair the T. S. Eliot Prize as it celebrates 30 years of excellence in poetry. I look forward to reading numerous collections, discovering remarkable new voices and rediscovering familiar ones, as I work alongside my distinguished fellow judges Sasha Dugdale and Denise Saul.

Michael Sims, Director of the T. S. Eliot Prize, said: 

We are delighted to be celebrating three decades of the T. S. Eliot Prize. Every year since its inauguration, the aim of the Prize has been to pick the best original book of poems in English, published within the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. Over 30 remarkable years this laudable aim has not wavered.

Paul Muldoon won the T. S. Eliot Prize 1994 for his collection The Annals of Chile (Faber & Faber) and was also shortlisted for Hay (1998), Moy Sand and Gravel (2002) and Horse Latitudes (2006); he was Chair of judges in 2000.

Sasha Dugdale’s most recent collection, Deformations (Carcanet Press), was shortlisted for the 2020 T. S. Eliot Prize. Denise Saul’s debut collection, The Room Between Us (Pavilion / Liverpool University Press), was shortlisted in 2022.

The call for submissions will go out in June, with the submission window closing at the end of July. 

The T. S. Eliot Prize 2023 Shortlist Readings will take place on Sunday 14 January 2024 at 7pm in the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall as part of its literature programme. This is the largest annual poetry event in the UK. Tickets for the Readings in the Royal Festival Hall will be on sale later this year.

The winner of the 2023 Prize will be announced at the Award Ceremony on Monday 15 January 2024, where the winner and the shortlisted poets will be presented with their cheques. 

For full information on this year’s judges, visit our Shortlist page on the T. S. Eliot Prize website.

The T. S. Eliot Prize was founded in 1993, and the inaugural winner was Ciaran Carson for his collection First Language (Gallery Press). A full list of all the winners can be found in the Previous Prizes section of the T. S. Eliot Prize website.