T. S. Eliot Prize News

THE T. S. ELIOT PRIZE 2023 CELEBRATES 30 YEARS OF EXCELLENCE IN POETRY; PAUL MULDOON TO CHAIR THE JUDGING PANEL

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L to r: Sasha Dugdale; Paul Muldoon (photo: Gary Doak); Denise Saul (photo: Karolina Heller)

As the T. S. Eliot Prize celebrates its 30th year, the T. S. Eliot Foundation is delighted to announce the judges for the 2023 Prize: the panel will be chaired by Paul Muldoon, alongside Sasha Dugdale and Denise Saul. 

The judges will be looking for the best new poetry collection written in English and published in 2023. The Prize is unique in that entrants are judged by their peers; the panel always consists of established poets.  

Paul Muldoon said: 

‘It’s an honour to chair the T. S. Eliot Prize as it celebrates 30 years of excellence in poetry. I look forward to reading numerous collections, discovering remarkable new voices and rediscovering familiar ones, as I work alongside my distinguished fellow judges Sasha Dugdale and Denise Saul.’

Michael Sims, Director of the T. S. Eliot Prize, said: 

‘We are delighted to be celebrating three decades of the T. S. Eliot Prize. Every year since its inauguration, the aim of the Prize has been to pick the best original book of poems in English, published within the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. Over 30 remarkable years this laudable aim has not wavered.’

Paul Muldoon won the T. S. Eliot Prize 1994 for his collection The Annals of Chile (Faber and Faber) and was also shortlisted for Hay (1998), Moy Sand and Gravel (2002) and Horse Latitudes (2006); he was Chair of judges in 2000.

Sasha Dugdale’s most recent collection, Deformations (Carcanet), was shortlisted for the 2020 T. S. Eliot Prize. Denise Saul’s debut collection, The Room Between Us (Pavilion / Liverpool University Press), was shortlisted in 2022.

The call for submissions will go out in June, with the submission window closing at the end of July. 

The T. S. Eliot Prize 2023 Shortlist Readings will take place on Sunday 14 January 2024 at 7pm in the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall as part of its literature programme. This is the largest annual poetry event in the UK.

Tickets for the Readings in the Royal Festival Hall will be on sale later this year.

The winner of the 2023 Prize will be announced at the Award Ceremony on Monday 15 January 2024, where the winner and the shortlisted poets will be presented with their cheques. 

For full information on this year’s judges, visit our judges page on the T. S. Eliot Prize website.

The T. S. Eliot Prize was founded in 1993, and the inaugural winner was Ciaran Carson for his collection First Language (Gallery Press). A full list of all the winners can be found in the Previous Prizes section of the T. S. Eliot Prize website.

ANTHONY JOSEPH’S SONNETS FOR ALBERT WINS THE T. S. ELIOT PRIZE

Anthony Joseph photo © Adrian Pope / T. S. Eliot Prize

The T. S. Eliot Foundation is delighted to announce that the winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize 2022 is Anthony Joseph for his collection Sonnets for Albert published by Bloomsbury Poetry.

Chair Jean Sprackland said:

Each of the ten books on this year’s shortlist spoke powerfully to us in its own distinctive voice. From this strong field our choice is Anthony Joseph’s Sonnets for Albert, a luminous collection which celebrates humanity in all its contradictions and breathes new life into this enduring form.

Following a record submission of 201 poetry collections from British and Irish publishers, Judges Jean Sprackland (Chair), Hannah Lowe and Roger Robinson chose the winner from a shortlist of ten books. The eclectic shortlist comprised seasoned poets, including one previous winner, and five debut collections.

In our interview with him, Anthony Joseph said of Sonnets for Albert: ‘At its heart the book is really about loss and love, I think love is the main theme – the capacity to love, the way we can love unconditionally where a person’s humanity, their substance, is so strong it displaces their questionable aspects. My father wasn’t great as a dad, but I loved him, was fascinated by him. Readers have asked how, or why I could write a book about someone who was not a good father to me. But that’s the point. I needed to write this all down to make sense of him and the impact of his absences on me.’

To read the interview with Anthony in full and to find videos, reviews and Readers’ Notes about Anthony’s collection, visit the shortlist page of our website.

Anthony Joseph (pictured above, photo: Naomi Woddis) is an acclaimed poet, novelist, academic and musician. He was the Colm Tóibín Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Liverpool in 2018, was awarded a Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship 2019/20 and is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at King’s College London. Anthony is the author of five poetry collections: Desafinado, Teragaton, Bird Head Son, Rubber Orchestras and, most recently, Sonnets for Albert, published by Bloomsbury. He has also written three novels including: The African Origins of UFOs; Kitch: A Fictional Biography of a Calypso Icon, which was shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, the Royal Society of Literature’s Encore Award and longlisted for the 2019 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature; and The Frequency of Magic. As a musician he has released eight critically acclaimed albums. Anthony was born in Trinidad and lives in London. anthonyjoseph.co.uk

YOUNG CRITICS’ VIDEO REVIEWS – ‘HIGHLY RECOMMENDED VIEWING!’

The T. S. Eliot Prize and The Poetry Society have now published the first set of video reviews created by participants in the new Young Critics Scheme.

Holly Moberley reviews The Room Between Us by Denise Saul and SZ Shao explores Jemma Borg’s Wilder, while Aliyah Begum, Eric Yip and Noah Jacob offer lively, conversational reviews of The Thirteenth Angel by Philip Gross, Slide by Mark Pajak and Ephemeron by Fiona Benson. The video reviews are now available to watch on the T. S. Eliot Prize and The Poetry Society’s YouTube channels.

‘We are delighted with the outcome of the Young Critics Scheme,’ said Michael Sims, Director of the T. S. Eliot Prize. ‘I would like to thank all the reviewers, who present astonishingly insightful and invigorating readings of their selected title from this year’s shortlist – the video reviews are highly recommended viewing!’

The Young Critics scheme, a new partnership project between the T. S. Eliot Prize and The Poetry Society’s Young Poets Network, invited ten writers aged 18-25 to create their own video review of each of the collections shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. The aim was to help them develop their creative and critical skills and to amplify young people’s voices in the conversation around this year’s T. S. Eliot Prize shortlist.

Look out for the second set of video reviews – Mukisa Verrall, Lily McDermott, Davina Bacon, Ruth Awolola and Abondance Matanda on (respectively) Manorism by Yomi Ṣode, bandit country by James Conor Patterson, Quiet by Victoria Adukwei Bulley, England’s Green by Zaffar Kunial and Sonnets for Albert by Anthony Joseph, which will be released in the coming weeks, ahead of the T. S. Eliot Prize Readings on 15 January 2023. Keep an eye out on the T. S. Eliot Prize and The Poetry Society’s YouTube channels and social media for news of their release.