Former Director Chris Holifield describes the founding and three decades of growth of the T. S. Eliot Prize
T. S. Eliot Prize winners: (top row, from left) Ocean Vuong, Michael Longley, Carol Ann Duffy, Paul Muldoon, Seamus Heaney, Sarah Howe, Don Paterson; (second row) Bhanu Kapil, Ted Hughes, Sean O’Brien, Sharon Olds, Roger Robinson, Alice Oswald, Philip Gross; (third row) Joelle Taylor, Anthony Joseph, John Burnside, Les Murray, Hannah Sullivan, Jen Hadfield; (fourth row) Mark Doty, Ciaran Carson, Derek Walcott, Jacob Polley, Anne Carson, Hugo Williams, George Szirtes, Sinéad Morrissey, David Harsent.
The T. S. Eliot Prize arose out of Eliot’s own involvement in the foundation of the Poetry Book Society. In 1953 Eliot was one of the group of people who came together to set up a poetry book club which would foster the purchase and reading of poetry books, ‘to support the growth of poetry readers’. Another member of the group was the bookseller Basil Blackwell.
The PBS grew only gradually over the following years, although it did acquire some funding from the Arts Council. In the early nineties Alastair Niven, then Director of Literature at the Arts Council, suggested to Brian Perman, who had been brought in to raise the profile of the PBS, that a poetry prize might be the answer. Matthew Evans at Faber (given the strong links that the company had with Eliot) was supportive and suggested asking Valerie Eliot to provide the prize money. Brian Perman’s colleague Martha Whittome went to see Valerie, who was still living in the flat she had shared with the poet and working on editing his letters. Valerie saw this as an opportunity to extend Eliot’s legacy and provided the initial £5,000 prize money, later increased to £10,000.
The first presentation of the Prize in 1993, marking the 40th anniversary of the PBS, was at the Chelsea Arts Club. The press and other guests were invited to a reception whilst the judges – chaired by Peter Porter – were deliberating upstairs, in what must have been a rather pressurised meeting. In his report for The Spectator, Michael Glover described joining ‘the hot and overwrought multitude that had packed into the dining room of the Chelsea Arts Club’. Ciaran Carson’s First Language was the first winner. From the start it was agreed that only full-length collections (defined as at least 48 pages) submitted by publishers in the UK and Ireland would be eligible and that the panel would always consist solely of poets.
The Prize graduated to the Polish Hearth Club In 1994 and a panel chaired by Elaine Feinstein chose The Annals of Chile by Paul Muldoon as the winner. In 1995 the Prize moved to the UCL Bloomsbury Theatre for the first Readings and a more formal presentation of the Prize, which was awarded to Mark Doty’s My Alexandria by judges chaired by James Fenton.
Clare Brown arrived as Director of the PBS in 1996 and Colman Getty were taken on to handle the Prize’s publicity, which they did until 2003. In 1996 the panel, chaired by Andrew Motion, chose Les Murray’s Subhuman Redneck Poems as the winner but unfortunately the poet wasn’t able to travel from Australia to the prizegiving. In 1997 a panel chaired by Gillian Clarke awarded the Prize to Don Paterson’s God’s Gift to Women.
The 1998 Prize, chaired by Bernard O’Donoghue and presented at the British Library, went to the publishing sensation that was Ted Hughes’ Birthday Letters, his last collection. Birthday Letters also won the Whitbread Book of the Year and the Forward Prize for Best Collection.
The 1999 Prize panel was chaired by Blake Morrison and the judges selected Hugo Williams’ Billy’s Rain as the winner. In 2000 the award ceremony moved to the extraordinarily grand Lancaster House, sponsored by the Culture Secretary. The winner was Michael Longley’s The Weather in Japan, chosen by a panel chaired by Paul Muldoon.
In 2001 Valerie Eliot generously increased the prize money to £15,000, but there was an ongoing practical issue for the PBS, which was not funded to run the Prize. The Prize that year went to The Beauty of the Husband by Anne Carson, the first woman to win the Prize, and the Chair of the judges was Helen Dunmore. Michael Longley chaired the 2002 Prize, which was awarded to Alice Oswald’s Dart.
In 2003 Clare Brown left the PBS and I came in as Director. I remember being highly impressed by the quality of the judging panel’s deliberations and somewhat intimidated by Lancaster House, although I was assured that the poets ‘secretly loved’ the splendour of this government palace. Don Paterson, the only poet to win the Prize twice, was declared the winner with Landing Light by a panel chaired by George Szirtes, and subsequently gave an inspiring and well-attended lecture about poetry at the Southbank Centre’s Purcell Room. This practice was continued in the following year by George Szirtes, the 2004 winner with Reel, chosen by a panel chaired by Douglas Dunn.
For me a highlight of these years was visiting Valerie Eliot in the rather grand Kensington flat she had shared with her husband to take copies of the shortlist, and thank her for supporting the Prize.
By 2005 the Readings were still at the UCL Bloomsbury Theatre but the award ceremony had migrated to the MacMillan Hall in the University of London’s Senate House. A panel chaired by David Constantine chose Rapture by Carol Ann Duffy (who was not yet Poet Laureate) as that year’s winner. In 2006, the excellent Gina Rozner took over the Prize’s PR and the awards event was staged in the Senate House’s Chancellor’s Hall. The panel chaired by Sean O’Brien chose Seamus Heaney as the winner for District and Circle.
In 2007 Sean O’Brien’s The Drowned Book, chosen by a panel chaired by Peter Porter, was awarded the Prize. The Readings for the 2008 Prize moved to the Southbank’s Queen Elizabeth Hall to enable us to accommodate a larger audience. This was the year when the Prize went to Jen Hadfield’s Nigh-No-Place, chosen by a panel chaired by Poet Laureate Andrew Motion. The day of the judging meeting was overshadowed by the tragic death of shortlisted poet Mick Imlah.
After a second Readings in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the 2009 Prize was awarded by a panel chaired by Simon Armitage to Philip Gross’s The Water Table.
2010 marked the Readings’ first year in the Royal Festival Hall. Although we had achieved good audiences in the QEH, moving to the RFH’s vast auditorium was a major risk. Derek Walcott was awarded the Prize for his widely applauded White Egrets, the first poet of colour to win the Eliot. He was unable to attend, though Seamus Heaney, his fellow Faber author, who had been shortlisted that year for Human Chain, did. Though Heaney wasn’t well, he had promised to ‘come if he could’ and after Christmas phoned to say he would make it after all, thus contributing to the biggest audience we ever had and ensuring that the largest annual poetry event in the country would continue to achieve that status year after year.
During 2011 the PBS was told it had lost its Arts Council funding as part of the first Osborne cuts. This was a huge shock and meant that the next four years became a battle to sustain the PBS and to continue to run the Prize. The 2011 Prize, announced at Haberdashers’ Hall with live TV coverage, was awarded by a panel headed by Gillian Clarke to John Burnside for Black Cat Bone. At the award ceremony it was announced that Aurum, a private investment company, would support the PBS.
In 2012 Carol Ann Duffy, by then the first female Poet Laureate, chaired a panel which awarded the Prize to Sharon Olds’s Stag’s Leap. By this time the award ceremony was held in the Courtyard at the Wallace Collection, an elegant and distinctive venue. In 2013 the PBS ran a T. S. Eliot Prize tour, involving 36 poets in ten venues around the country to mark the 20th anniversary of the Prize. The winner that year was Northern Irish poet Sinéad Morrissey for Parallax, with a judges’ panel headed by Ian Duhig. In 2014 a panel chaired by Helen Dunmore chose David Harsent’s Fire Songs as the winner.
By 2015 changes in the poetry world were affecting the Prize. A younger generation had come to the fore, with more influence from performance poets and more poetry books being published. Poetry pamphlets were making their presence felt and a larger number of publishers were publishing poetry and submitting their books for the Prize. The T. S. Eliot Estate increased the Prize money to £20,000 and the shortlisted poets each received £1,000. For the first time, a debut collection won the Prize, with Sarah Howe’s Loop of Jade being declared the winner by a panel chaired by Pascale Petit.
Jacob Polley’s wonderful Jackself won the 2016 Prize, with Ruth Padel chairing the panel of judges. But 2016 otherwise proved a cataclysmic year for the PBS. The charity was forced into liquidation by a lack of funds but at the last moment the PBS itself was transferred to Inpress Books in Newcastle, where it continues to offer its members the Poet-Selectors’ choice of the best contemporary poetry in the UK and Ireland. Thankfully, the T. S. Eliot Foundation took over the full funding and running of the Prize and appointed me Director.
In 2017, to mark the Prize’s 25th anniversary, the T. S. Eliot Foundation increased the value of the Prize – each of the ten shortlisted poets would receive £1,500 and the winner, £25,000. There were a record 154 submissions and for the first time we commissioned videos of the poets reading and talking about their work to widen engagement with all of the shortlist. A panel chaired by W.N. Herbert chose Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong as the winner; at 29, Ocean was the youngest poet ever to win the Prize.
The 2018 Prize marked a turning point. In an article written for the Prize’s e-newsletter judge Clare Pollard noted ‘the surge in small presses’ publishing poetry and that ‘poetry sales have risen 66% in the last five years’. A diverse shortlist included the American poets Terrance Hayes and Tracy K. Smith, the US Poet Laureate. Hannah Sullivan’s Three Poems was chosen as the winner by a panel chaired by Sinéad Morrissey. Nobody who was in the Royal Festival Hall for the Readings that year could forget Hannah’s extraordinary reading.
2019 saw a panel chaired by John Burnside chose Roger Robinson’s A Portable Paradise as the winner from an outstandingly diverse and international shortlist.
2020 was of course an extremely difficult year as the pandemic raged and the Readings had to be presented online, which was disappointing for the poets and a complex feat of organisation. At the end Lavinia Greenlaw, Chair of the judges, announced the winner, Bhanu Kapil’s How to Wash a Heart, published by small press Pavilion Poetry.
In 2021 the Prize fared much better, with the Readings in front of an enthusiastic audience back in the Royal Festival Hall and an award ceremony, which was less well-attended than usual but had a similarly positive feel. The panel chaired by Glyn Maxwell chose Joelle Taylor’s C+nto and Othered Poems, which he described as ‘a blazing book of rage and light, a grand opera of liberation from the shadows of indifference and oppression’.
So to last year, when I departed from the Prize, handing over to my successor Mike Sims. A panel chaired by Jean Sprackland chose Anthony Joseph’s Sonnets for Albert as the 2022 winner.
It’s been quite a ride! So here’s to future decades of the fantastic T. S. Eliot Prize, which over thirty years has done so much to support and encourage poets, and to enthuse and entertain readers and audiences.
Chris Holifield was Director of the Poetry Book Society, 2003-16, and Director of the T. S. Eliot Prize 2016-22.
During 2023, we asked past winners to reflect on their experiences and the impact of the Prize on their careers as poets. Read their fascinating, funny and moving insights on our news pages.