This article on the T. S. Eliot Prize was first published on the Poetry Book Society website in 2014.
The Poetry Book Society is delighted to announce that the winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry 2013 is Parallax by Sinéad Morrissey, published by Carcanet Press. This is the fourth time Morrissey has been shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, having previously been shortlisted in 2002, 2005 and 2009.
Judges Ian Duhig (Chair), Imtiaz Dharker and Vicki Feaver have chosen the winner from a strong Shortlist after months of reading and deliberation.
The poets on this year’s star-studded Shortlist have won over 35 prizes and awards between them, though only two, Anne Carson and George Szirtes, have previously won the T. S. Eliot Prize.
Chair Ian Duhig said:
In a year of brilliantly themed collections, the judges were unanimous in choosing Sinéad Morrissey’s Parallax as the winner. Politically, historically and personally ambitious, expressed in beautifully turned language, her book is as many-angled and any-angled as its title suggests.
Sinéad Morrissey was born in 1972 in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. She is the author of five poetry collections, four of which – Between Here and There (2002); The State of the Prisons (2005); the Poetry Book Society Choice Through the Square Window (2009); and Parallax (2013) – have been shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. Parallax was published this year and was also shortlisted for the 2013 Forward Prize for Best Collection. She lives in Belfast where she is Reader in Creative Writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre and Belfast’s inaugural Poet Laureate.
Ian Duhig formally announced the winner at the T. S. Eliot Prize Award Ceremony in the Courtyard of the Wallace Collection on Monday 13 January. The winner was presented with a cheque for £15,000 and each shortlisted poet received a cheque for £1,000 in recognition of their achievement in winning a place on the most prestigious shortlist in UK poetry. The Poetry Book Society would like to acknowledge Mrs Valerie Eliot’s great generosity in providing the prize money since the inception of the Prize and are delighted that this support has been continued by the Trustees of the T. S. Eliot Estate.
The award ceremony was preceded by the T. S. Eliot Prize Readings on Sunday 12th January, held in the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall.
The Prize receives generous support from the T. S. Eliot Estate. This year marks the third year of three-year support from Aurum, a private investment management firm which manages funds for charities, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and private individuals, and which supports a range of charities.
The Poetry Book Society has recently completed a nationwide T. S. Eliot Prize 20th Anniversary Tour, taking shortlisted and prize-winning poets to ten venues across the country. See the short film of the Tour here.
This article has been republished to provide a fuller picture of the T. S. Eliot Prize history. The Poetry Book Society ran the T. S. Eliot Prize until 2016, when the T. S. Eliot Foundation took over the Prize, the estate having supported it since its inception.
