T. S. Eliot Prize News

2009 WINNER PHILIP GROSS ON THE T. S. ELIOT PRIZE’S ‘FLASH OF BRIGHT ATTENTION’

In 2023 the T. S. Eliot Prize celebrates its 30th anniversary. We’re marking the occasion by looking back at the collections which have won ‘the Prize poets most want to win’ (Sir Andrew Motion).

Philip Gross won the T. S. Eliot Prize 2009 for The Water Table (Bloodaxe Books), chosen by judges Simon Armitage (Chair), Colette Bryce and Penelope Shuttle. Armitage described it as ‘a mature and determined book, dream-like in places, but dealing ultimately with real questions of human existence’.

We asked Philip to reflect on his experience of winning the Prize. He wrote:

The best thing that the T. S. Eliot Prize experience did for me was… it surprised me. Utterly. The Water Table had come into the world without particular notice in the places I might have hoped for. I’d been philosophical. Would I trust the way the poetry was leading me, even in the face of scant encouragement? Yes, it seemed that I would. Then the TSE surprise came as an affirmation of that.
          And equally, somehow, it also seemed to free me, not to bind me in the way success can sometimes do. It came with no expectation that I had to try to do the same again. My following book, Deep Field, was outwardly quite different – only I might see the underground streams that link them – but it had the courage to be itself, and so have quite a few more books since then. I thank the Eliot Prize for that, and hope it will never lose that quality of unpredictability – not a routine landmark for the usual suspects, but sometimes a flash of bright attention that lights up a collection’s true quality, maybe even in a way that takes the author by surprise.

Philip Gross was born in Cornwall, the son of an Estonian wartime refugee. He has lived in Plymouth, Bristol and South Wales, where he was Professor of Creative Writing at Glamorgan University (USW). His twenty-seventh collection, The Thirteenth Angel (Bloodaxe Books), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize 2022. Philip regularly collaborates with other artists, photographers and writers; he also writes poetry for young people – The All-Nite Café won the Signal Award 1994, and Off Road to Everywhere won the CLPE Award 2011. He received a Cholmondeley Award in 2017. (Philip Gross photo by Stephen Morris.)

ABOUT THE T. S. ELIOT PRIZE

The T. S. Eliot Prize celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2023. Awarded annually to the best new poetry collection published in the UK and Ireland, the Prize was founded by the Poetry Book Society in 1993 to celebrate the PBS’s 40th birthday and to honour its founding poet. It has been run by The T. S. Eliot Foundation since 2016. For more on the history of the Prize, visit tseliot.com/prize

The judges of the T. S. Eliot Prize 2023 are Paul Muldoon (Chair), Sasha Dugdale and Denise Saul. Submissions are now open and will close at the end of July. The 2023 Shortlist Readings will be held on 14 January 2024 at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall; tickets will go on sale later this year. The winner of the 2023 Prize will be announced at the Award Ceremony on 15 January 2024.

Sign up to the T. S. Eliot Prize e-newsletter for regular updates about the award. It includes poems and specially commissioned video readings by our shortlisted poets, plus interviews, biographical information, reviews, Readers’ Notes, and news and offers from across the poetry world.

RECALIBRATION AND CHANGE: BHANU KAPIL ON WINNING THE T. S. ELIOT PRIZE 2020

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In 2023 the T. S. Eliot Prize celebrates its 30th anniversary. We’re celebrating the occasion by looking back at the collections which have won ‘the Prize poets most want to win’ (Sir Andrew Motion).

Bhanu Kapil

Bhanu Kapil won the T. S. Eliot Prize 2020, judged by Lavinia Greenlaw (Chair), Mona Arshi and Andrew McMillan. ‘Our shortlist celebrated the ways in which poetry is responding to profound change,’ Lavinia Greenlaw said. ‘From this impressive field, we unanimously chose Bhanu Kapil’s How to Wash a Heart as our winner. It is a radical and arresting collection that recalibrates what it’s possible for poetry to achieve.’ 

We asked Bhanu to reflect on winning the T. S. Eliot Prize. She wrote:

The night I won the T. S. Eliot Prize, I was at home, about to microwave a plate of Indian food, when a friend texted: ‘Congratulations!’ She’d forwarded to the end of the Prize Readings video, something I had not done, precisely because it had not occurred to me to do so. I was so shocked. At that time, it was still the pandemic, and as a carer of an older parent, I was cautious about travel or spending time indoors in groups. Or perhaps the live Readings had been cancelled? And that’s why I was making dinner in my pyjamas, ready to celebrate whoever it was who was about to win? I will never forget the visceral surprise.
          The next morning, I made a red ice heart, like the one I’d created for the ICA performance the book was inspired by, and which I describe in the notes that come at the end of the poems. Then, I placed it in the fresh snow outside my door, to melt. That day, I felt a sense of freedom and possibility, recalling the deep wish I’d had, to write something that could bring me back to the UK after so long in the United States. It’s that wish that manifested as a book, in the first place, thanks to Deryn Rees-Jones and Pavilion Poetry. But publishing a book of poetry does not always mean it will be widely read, in the way that one hopes for or imagines. Sometimes a book is like a stone thrown into the water. It sinks to the bottom, and many years pass before it’s picked up, or read again. That, in fact, had been my experience with all my previous books, all published by small presses in the US. But now, this very specific dream, of writing something that might be read in my birthplace, in one sitting, by many people, had come spectacularly true.
          The experience led to many gates swinging open. I went through them, these cultural gates, but it took some time to feel the congruence between the writer that I am when I am writing in a notebook, and this other writer, the one who’s won a prize. Winning the Eliot Prize was protection, a shield, and it really helped me to re-establish my life in the UK. The money helped immensely, but it was this radical incongruence, of abruptly being or becoming a writer who’d won a prize, that led to great change. I think it has changed the way I write: towards what, and for whom.
          The exhibition Esta Luz, Tóxica (II Movimiento), a collaboration with Giulia Cenci, Georgina Hill and Jonás De Murías, is an example of a curation that the book has flowed into and through, in ways that I don’t think the book could have done without the visibility of the Prize.

Bhanu Kapil is the author of five books of poetry/prose: The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers (Kelsey Street Press, 2001), the newly reissued Incubation: a space for monsters (Leon Works, 2006), humanimal [a project for future children] (Kelsey Street Press, 2009), Schizophrene (Nightboat, 2011), and Ban en Banlieue (Nightboat, 2015). She was the recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize for Poetry 2020.

ABOUT THE T. S. ELIOT PRIZE

The T. S. Eliot Prize celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2023. Awarded annually to the best new poetry collection published in the UK and Ireland, the Prize was founded by the Poetry Book Society in 1993 to celebrate the PBS’s 40th birthday and to honour its founding poet. It has been run by The T. S. Eliot Foundation since 2016. For more on the history of the Prize, visit tseliot.com/prize

The judges of the T. S. Eliot Prize 2023 are Paul Muldoon (Chair), Sasha Dugdale and Denise Saul. Submissions are now open and will close at the end of July. The 2023 Shortlist Readings will be held on 14 January 2024 at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall; tickets will go on sale later this year. The winner of the 2023 Prize will be announced at the Award Ceremony on 15 January 2024.

Sign up to the T. S. Eliot Prize e-newsletter for regular updates about the award. It includes poems and specially commissioned video readings by our shortlisted poets, plus interviews, biographical information, reviews, Readers’ Notes, and news and offers from across the poetry world.

YOUNG CRITICS SCHEME 2023: 18-25 YEAR OLDS INVITED TO APPLY

The T. S. Eliot Prize and The Poetry Society are delighted to open applications for a second year of the highly praised Young Critics Scheme.

Davina Bacon, who participated in the inaugural Young Critics Scheme, presents a video about her experience on the T. S. Eliot Prize and The Poetry Society YouTube channels.

The exciting mentoring programme offers ten emerging critics, aged 18 to 25 and based in the UK and Ireland, the chance to learn about reviewing poetry collections from experts, and to create their own video review of one of the ten collections shortlisted for the prestigious T. S. Eliot Prize 2023. The video reviews will appear on the T. S. Eliot Prize and The Poetry Society’s websites, social media and YouTube channels in the run-up to the announcement of the winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize on 15 January 2024.

Applications for the 2023 Young Critics Scheme are now open and must close on 16 August 2023. Find the full details about the programme, and submit your application here.

This year’s scheme follows a hugely successful first year, in which the Young Critics’ video reviews were seen over 25,000 times and shared online by readers, publishers, poets and critics. Several of the Young Critics have since been invited to review for leading magazines including The Poetry Review and Poetry London.

To encourage applicants to this year’s Young Critics Scheme, we asked some of the Young Critics to make videos about their experience on the programme, with reviewing and video-editing tips. Davina Bacon (pictured above) has contributed a wonderful video about her experience to the T. S. Eliot Prize and The Poetry Society YouTube channels. Look out for SZ Shao’s video, which will be published shortly. Two features published on Young Poets Network as part of the 2022 scheme also help young writers prepare for the programme: How To Write A Poetry Review and 15 Top Tips From Leading Critics.

The ten selected participants will attend four online workshops in October and November 2023 on reviewing poetry, editing and video-making, including one led by the acclaimed critic and poet Jen Campbell. They will be assigned one book from the T. S. Eliot Prize 2023 shortlist in early October, and asked to submit a video review by 20 November 2023.

The Young Critics will receive copies of all the shortlisted collections and two free tickets to the celebrated T. S. Eliot Prize Readings at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, London, on 14 January 2024 (or free access to the livestream if they are unable to attend). They will have the chance to meet each other over dinner, and beyond the programme they will receive support from The Poetry Society and T. S. Eliot Prize to form networks and further develop their reviewing careers.

‘The world of reviewing feels more accessible to me than ever, like a potential career avenue,’ commented one of last year’s Young Critics. Watch last year’s video reviews here – and don’t forget to apply in time for this year’s scheme before the deadline of 16 August.

The Poetry Society is the UK’s leading organisation for poetry. With innovative education and commissioning programmes, and a packed calendar of performances, competitions, and digital projects, The Poetry Society champions poetry for all ages. poetrysociety.org.uk