Photo © Tony Griffiths

Katrina Porteous, shortlisted with her collection Rhizodont (Bloodaxe Books, 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 Katrina and her work. This includes our specially produced videos of Katrina reading from Rhizodont and talking about the collection.

Download the Reader’s Notes on Rhizodont, which include a selection of the poems, 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 published a powerful review, commissioned from John Field, offering powerful insights into the work. Katrina has also made a brilliant contribution to the Poetry School’s Writer’s Notes project, in which she talks about her writing practice. The series helps professional poets and creative writing students develop their practice by sharing the writing approaches of some of contemporary poetry’s most exciting and accomplished voices.

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

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.