The T. S. Eliot Prize is celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2023, having been inaugurated by the Poetry Book Society in 1993 to mark the Poetry Book Society’s 40th birthday, and to honour its founding poet. The T. S. Eliot estate has provided the prize money since the Prize’s inception, and the T. S. Eliot Foundation took over the running of the Prize in 2016, following Inpress Books’ acquisition of the PBS.

We have been delving into that glittering past and hope to stir happy memories as we reflect on the rich archive the Prize has built up over the decades.

Chris Holifield, former Director of the Prize, has chronicled the history and growth of the Prize in an article on the T. S. Eliot Prize website. We have also asked past winners to tell us about the impact the Prize has had on their writing and careers. ‘I think it has changed the way I write: towards what, and for whom’, responded Bhanu Kapil, our 2020 winner. ‘It changed other people’s sense of what I’d already written, at least slightly, and that was good luck’, said Hannah Sullivan, who won in 2018. ‘But it also changed my own sense of what I might write in the future, and that was a gift.’ Sinéad Morrissey, who won in 2013, wrote: ‘Though it’s a decade ago now – inexorably, another ten years has passed – and though winning is never a given, but rather an extraordinary stroke of brightly-coloured luck – being awarded the T. S. Eliot Prize changed my life.’

To read the articles by Bhanu, Hannah and Sinéad in full, alongside fascinating contributions by many other winners, visit the Eliot website news pages. And be sure to look out for other ways we’ll be celebrating the Eliot Prize’s 30th anniversary in the months ahead.

T. S. Eliot Prize winners: (top row, from left) Ocean Vuong, Michael Longley, Carol Ann Duffy, Paul Muldoon, Seamus Heaney, Sarah Howe, Don Paterson; (second row) Bhanu Kapil, Ted Hughes, Sean O’Brien, Sharon Olds, Roger Robinson, Alice Oswald, Philip Gross; (third row) Joelle Taylor, Anthony Joseph, John Burnside, Les Murray, Hannah Sullivan, Jen Hadfield; (fourth row) Mark Doty, Ciaran Carson, Derek Walcott, Jacob Polley, Anne Carson, Hugo Williams, George Szirtes, Sinéad Morrissey, David Harsent.