We asked members of the Southbank Centre’s New Poets Collectives if they would help us mark the 30th anniversary of the T. S. Eliot Prize. Over recent weeks, members of the Collectives have been making video recordings of readings from the winning collections of the past three decades. Recorded indoors and out, the videos make a place for Eliot Prize-winning poetry everywhere. You can view the recordings of all of the readings to date on the T.S. Eliot Prize YouTube channel and find them on our social media postings, too. We will continue to expand the set in the coming weeks.

The T. S. Eliot Prize celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2023. Awarded annually to the best new poetry collection published in the UK and Ireland, the Prize was founded by the Poetry Book Society in 1993 to celebrate the PBS’s 40th birthday and to honour its founding poet. It has been run by The T. S. Eliot Foundation since 2016. You can read articles by many past winners in our online news section, as well as a short history by Chris Holifield, former Director.

The Southbank Centre’s New Poets Collective programme, supported by the T. S. Eliot Foundation and centred around the National Poetry Library, helps a group of up to fifteen poets hone their skills and expand their knowledge and confidence. Lead tutors Vanessa Kisuule and Will Harris and special guest poets lead monthly in-person sessions for the collective. The programme culminates with presentations at the London Literature Festival and a zine. It also includes industry insight sessions designed to provide tools for this group of emerging poets to build their writing careers in the years ahead.