1999
T. S. Eliot Prize
Winner
Hugo Williams was born in 1942 and grew up in Sussex. He worked on the London Magazine from 1961 to 1970, and has since earned his living as a journalist and travel writer. His Collected Poems, which brings together work from eight books, including the 1999 T. S. Eliot Prize-winning Billy's Rain, was published in 2002. His poetry collection Dear Room (2006) was shortlisted for the 2006 Costa Poetry Award; West End Final (2009), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize and the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2009; and I Knew the Bride (Faber & Faber) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2014. Hugo Williams has since published two further collections with Faber: Lines Off (2022) and Fast Music (2024). He was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2004.
Faber & Faber
Announcements
Introduction
The T. S. Eliot Prize is awarded annually to the writer of the best new poetry collection published in the UK and Ireland. Described by Sir Andrew Motion as ‘the prize poets most want to win’ and by The Independent as the ‘world’s top poetry award’, it is the most prestigious poetry prize in the world, and the only major poetry prize judged purely by established poets.
Announcements
Introduction
The T. S. Eliot Prize is awarded annually to the writer of the best new poetry collection published in the UK and Ireland. Described by Sir Andrew Motion as ‘the prize poets most want to win’ and by The Independent as the ‘world’s top poetry award’, it is the most prestigious poetry prize in the world, and the only major poetry prize judged purely by established poets.
Announcements
Shortlisted Works
Shortlisted Poets
Anne Carson was born in Canada and teaches ancient Greek for a living. Her awards and honours include...
Carol Ann Duffy (born 23 December 1955) is a Scottish poet and playwright. She is a professor of...
Durcan was born in Dublin in 1944. His first book, Endsville (1967), was followed by more than twenty...
Michael Hofmann FRSL was born in 1957 in Freiburg, the son of German parents, and came to England...
Kathleen Jamie was born in Scotland in 1962. She has published several collections of poetry, including: Black Spiders...
Michael Laskey has published five collections, most recently Between Ourselves (2022) and Weighing the Present (2014), both from Smith|Doorstop. His first two collections...
Bernard O’Donoghue was born in Cullen, Co Cork in 1945, later moving to Manchester. He is an Emeritus...
Tom Paulin grew up in Belfast and now lives in Oxford, where he is Emeritus Fellow of Hertford...
C.K. Williams (1936-2015) was born in New Jersey, and lived latterly in Paris, Normandy and Princeton, USA. He...
Judges
CHAIR
Blake Morrison grew up near Skipton in Yorkshire and was formerly literary editor of the Observer and the...
Videos
Related News Stories
The T. S. Eliot Prize video and audio archive spans four decades and is ever expanding. Each year, following the announcement of the T. S. Eliot Prize Shortlist, we invite the shortlisted poets to a filming session. We record an interview with each of them and ask them to read...
In 2023 the T. S. Eliot Prize celebrated its 30th anniversary. We marked the occasion by looking back at the collections which have won ‘the Prize poets most want to win’ (Sir Andrew Motion). Judges Blake Morrison (Chair), Selima Hill and Jamie McKendrick chose Hugo Williams’s Billy’s Rain (Faber &...
This article on the early years of the T. S. Eliot Prize was written and added to the website in 2025. The winner of T. S. Eliot Prize 1999 was Hugo Williams for his collection Billy’s Rain (Faber & Faber). Williams was awarded £5,000, the generous gift of Mrs...
