This article on the T. S. Eliot Prize was first published on the Poetry Book Society website in 2007. Please note that although it was announced that U. A. Fanthorpe would chair the 2007 judges panel, Peter Porter would ultimately chair this year of the Prize.
The Poetry Book Society is delighted to announce the judges for the 2007 T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry. U. A. Fanthorpe will serve as Chair of the judges and the two other judges will be W. N. Herbert and Sujata Bhatt.
The judges will meet in early November to decide on the ten-book shortlist. The four Poetry Book Society Choice collections from 2007 are automatically shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. The Spring 2007 Choice was The Speed of Dark by Ian Duhig (Picador Poetry) and the Summer 2007 Choice was The Pomegranates of Kandahar by Sarah Maguire (Chatto & Windus). They are joined on the shortlist by the PBS Autumn Choice which has just been announced as Sean O’Brien’s The Drowned Book, published by Picador Poetry. The Winter Choice will be announced at the beginning of August.
The T. S. Eliot Shortlist Readings will take place on Sunday 13 January 2008. The winner will be announced at the award ceremony the following evening, Monday 14 January 2008. Following last year’s successful initiative, A Level students will again be encouraged to participate in the T. S. Eliot Prize School Shadowing Scheme, run in partnership between the Poetry Book Society and the English and Media Centre.
Last year’s winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize was Seamus Heaney, for his collection District and Circle (Faber and Faber). The judges were Sean O’Brien (Chair), Sophie Hannah and Gwyneth Lewis.
The T. S. Eliot Prize was inaugurated in 1993 to celebrate the Poetry Book Society’s 40th birthday, and honour its founding poet. Now in its fifteenth year, the T. S. Eliot Prize is the ‘world’s top poetry award’ (Louise Jury, the Irish Independent). The prize is awarded annually to the writer of the best new collection published in the UK or Ireland. It is unique as it is always judged by a panel of established poets. Andrew Motion, the Poet Laureate, has described it as ‘the Prize most poets want to win’.
Previous winners (in chronological order) are: Ciaran Carson, Paul Muldoon, Mark Doty, Les Murray, Don Paterson, Ted Hughes, Hugo Williams, Michael Longley, Anne Carson, Alice Oswald, Don Paterson, George Szirtes, Carol Ann Duffy and Seamus Heaney.
This article has been republished to provide a fuller picture of the T. S. Eliot Prize history. The Poetry Book Society ran the T. S. Eliot Prize until 2016, when the T. S. Eliot Foundation took over the Prize, the estate having supported it since its inception.
