Karen Solie grew up in southwest Saskatchewan. Wellwater (Picador Poetry), her sixth collection of poetry, is the joint winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2025 (with Vidyan Ravinthiran’s Avidyā). Solie’s previous collections – Short Haul Engine, Modern and Normal, Pigeon, The Road In Is Not the Same Road Out and The Caiplie Caves – have won the Dorothy Livesay Prize, Pat Lowther Award, Trillium Poetry Prize, and the Griffin Prize, and been shortlisted for the Derek Walcott Prize and the T. S. Eliot Prize. The Living Option: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books) was published in the UK in 2013. A 2023 Guggenheim Fellow, Karen Solie teaches for half of the year at the University of St Andrews in Scotland and lives the rest of the time in Canada. Author photo © Russell Hart
Shortlisted Works
Related News Stories
The T.S. Eliot Prize and The Poetry Society are delighted to publish the video reviews created by participants in this year’s Young Critics Scheme. Michael Sims, Director of the T. S. Eliot Prize welcomed ‘another brilliant year for the Young Critics Scheme’. He said, ‘The 2025 cohort’s video reviews of...
Karen Solie, shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize 2025 with her collection Wellwater (Picador Poetry), is the featured poet in this week’s Eliot Prize newsletter. The newsletter tells you about the wide range of content we have just published to help you get to know Karen and her work....
We’re delighted to announce the T. S. Eliot Prize 2025 Shortlist, which offers ‘something for everyone’ in collections of ‘great range, suggestiveness and power’. Judges Michael Hofmann (Chair), Patience Agbabi and Niall Campbell chose the Shortlist from 177 poetry collections submitted by 64 British and Irish publishers. The diverse list...
The T. S. Eliot Foundation is delighted to announce the judges for the T. S. Eliot Prize 2025. Chair Michael Hofmann will be joined on the panel by Patience Agbabi and Niall Campbell. Michael Hofmann said: I’m delighted to be asked to judge the T. S. Eliot Prize and look...
Times are dark, but the poets are singing. 2019 has been another strong year for poetry. Thematically, poetry is increasingly, necessarily political. Brecht asked in 1938: What kind of times are they, when A talk about trees is almost a crime Because it implies silence about so many horrors? We...
Judges John Burnside (Chair), Sarah Howe and Nick Makoha have chosen the T. S. Eliot Prize 2019 Shortlist from 158 poetry collections submitted by British and Irish publishers. Featuring new voices and veteran poets, and covering an extraordinary range of themes, the Shortlist comprises five men, four women and one...
