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.

Carl Phillips. Photo © Reston Allen

I think it’s a book about being older and also the slipperiness of memory […] It’s very troubling I find, the older I get, to realise that memory can’t be trusted. We often remember things as we need them to be in our minds so we can live with ourselves. – Carl Phillips, T. S. Eliot Prize film interview

Carl Phillips, shortlisted with his collection Scattered Snows, to the North (Carcanet Press, 2024), is the featured poet in this week’s Eliot Prize e-newsletter.

The newsletter tells you about the wide range of content we have just published to help you get to know Carl and his work. This includes specially produced videos of the poet reading from Scattered Snows, to the North and talking about the collection.

Download the Reader’s Notes on Scattered Snows, to the North, which include a selection of poems from the collection, plus reviews, reading suggestions, and a writing prompt or two for those inspired to respond creatively. The aim of the Readers’ Notes is to inspire deeper readings of the book, individually or shared with friends, book groups or writing workshops.

We have also published a perceptive review, commissioned from John Field, offering powerful insights into the work.

To be the first to read Eliot Prize news, simply sign up to weekly e-newsletter.

Gboyega Odubanjo. Photo © Asare Debrah

‘What a voice [Gboyega Odubanjo] has – fresh, worn, elegiac, present. If ever a volume offered a story about water, loss, migration and every last one of us, Adam does. – Andrew O’Hagan, Observer

Gboyega Odubanjo, shortlisted with his collection Adam (Faber & Faber, 2024), is the featured poet in this week’s Eliot Prize e-newsletter.

The newsletter tells you about the range of content we have just published to help you get to know more about Gboyega Odubanjo and his work. This includes Reader’s Notes, which include a selection of poems from Adam, plus reviews, reading suggestions, and writing prompts for those inspired to respond creatively. The aim of the Readers’ Notes is to inspire deeper readings of the book, individually or shared with friends, book groups or writing workshops. We have also published a searching review, commissioned from John Field.

The poetry community is still grieving the death last year of Gboyega Odubanjo. He was born in 1996 and raised in East London. He authored three poetry pamphlets: While I Yet Live (Bad Betty Press, 2019); Two stops short of Barking (The Alternative School of Economics, 2021); and Aunty Uncle Poems (The Poetry Business / New Poets List, 2021), winner of the Michael Marks Award and an Eric Gregory Award. Adam is his debut full collection. A Barbican Young Poets alumnus, Odubanjo was an editor at bath magg and Bad Betty Press, co-chair of Magma and a member of the Roundhouse Poetry Collective, after which he later became a Roundhouse Resident Artist. He was a Creative Writing Tutor on the Creative Future IMPART programme, supporting writers from under-represented backgrounds. His UK garage single ‘LDN GRLS’ with Love Remain is out with the Sony Music UK label Black Butter Records. The Gboyega Odubanjo Foundation for low-income Black writers was established in 2023 to honour his legacy.

To read more about this year’s Eliot Prize, simply sign up to weekly e-newsletter.