Young Critics Orla Davey, Sylvie Jane Lewis, Priyanka Moorjani, Eira Murphy and Joe Wright have produced remarkable video reviews of the T. S. Eliot Prize shortlisted titles.
The T.S. Eliot Prize and The Poetry Society are delighted to publish the first five of ten video reviews created by participants in this year’s Young Critics Scheme. ‘The videos combine both dazzling critiques and visuals,’ said Michael Sims, Director of the T. S. Eliot Prize, calling the reviews ‘a brilliant way to deepen the reader’s experience and understanding of the collections.’
Following a series of criticism workshops led by The Poetry Society, this year’s Young Critics – Ahana Banerji, Eira Murphy, Elliot Ruff, Joe Wright, Orla Davey, Priya Abularach, Priyanka Moorjani, Sylvie Jane Lewis, Tallulah Howarth, and Tusshara Nalakumar Srilatha – have produced engaging and insightful video reviews of the T. S. Eliot Prize 2024 Shortlist.
Five of the video reviews are now available to watch on The Poetry Society and T. S. Eliot Prize’s YouTube channels: Priyanka Moorjani reviews Signs, Music by Raymond Antrobus, guiding the viewer through the speaker’s ‘avalanche’ of emotions upon becoming a parent. Joe Wright considers the formal and poetic influences mapped throughout Hannah Copley’s Lapwing, while Sylvie Jane Lewis pays close attention to the epigraphs of Helen Farish’s The Penny Dropping and how they haunt the rest of the text. Eira Murphy situates Peter Gizzi’s Fierce Elegy within the poet’s wider corpus and influences, asking ‘in what ways might we come to a world increasingly pushed to the horizon of its own collapse?’, and Orla Davey interrogates Gustav Parker Hibbett’s use of mythology in High Jump as Icarus Story.
The Scheme, now in its third year, is a partnership project that invites ten writers aged between 18 and 25 to take part in workshops and create short video reviews of each of the collections shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. The scheme aims to develop the skills of emerging critics and to amplify the voices of young people in poetry.
This year the workshops included exercises on what makes a review engaging or alienating, critical methods reviewers might borrow from other disciplines, and how to present ideas to camera. Critic Helen Bowell led a session on different ways of opening a review, and Poetry London Reviews Editor Isabelle Baafi shared her journey as a reviewer and some top tips for pitching to magazines and journals.
Several Young Critics alumni have gone on to publish reviews in leading journals such as The Poetry Review, Poetry London, and Magma. 2023 Young Critic Oliver Cooney said, ‘The Young Critics Scheme gave me so much more confidence to engage in poetry, whether that’s in actually writing reviews or just having conversations. It really opened my eyes to the world of poetry criticism: I feel like I learned a lot about what that actually looks like and all the many forms it can take.’
Look out for the next five video reviews which will be released on 16 December, ahead of the T. S. Eliot Prize Readings on 12 January 2025. Details will be posted on The Poetry Society and T. S. Eliot Prize’s YouTube channels and social media. Find out more about the Young Critics Scheme here.