Would you like to be among the first to hear which collections have been shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize 2022? Then join Jean Sprackland, chair of judges, at a free event at this year’s Cheltenham Literature Festival. Jean will announce which ten collections she and her fellow judges have chosen, share the judges’ thoughts on the books and invite your questions. Drop in at The Huddle, Montpellier Gardens, Cheltenham, on Thursday 13 October, 3-4pm. For more details, view the Festival free programme.
Also on 13 October, at 7pm, don’t miss a celebratory reading by T. S. Eliot Prizewinner 2021, Joelle Taylor. Joelle will read from her Prize-winning collection, C+nto & Othered Poems, described by 2021 chair Glyn Maxwell as ‘a blazing book of rage and light, a grand opera of liberation’. Ollie O’Neill, former UK Youth Slam Champion and Barbican Young Poet alumni, will be Joelle’s guest reader. Tickets are £10 and can be purchased online.
The following day, in another Cheltenham Literature Festival exclusive, Matthew Hollis, Faber Poetry Editor and author of the forthcoming The Waste Land: A Biography of a Poem, Erica Wagner, critic and author, and Daljit Nagra, twice shortlisted for and a former judge of the T. S. Eliot Prize, will present an expert guide to Eliot’s The Waste Land in its centenary year. See them on Friday 16 October, from 6.15pm, on the Baillie Gifford Stage, Town Hall, Cheltenham; tickets £12 available online.