This article on the T. S. Eliot Prize was first published on the Poetry Book Society website in 2010.
The Poetry Book Society is delighted to announce the judges for the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry 2010. Anne Stevenson will be Chair of the judges and the other two members of the panel will be Bernardine Evaristo and Michael Symmons Roberts.
The judges for the 2009 T. S. Eliot Prize were Simon Armitage (Chair), Colette Bryce and Penelope Shuttle.
Last year’s winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize was Philip Gross for his collection The Water Table.
The Poetry Book Society awards the annual T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, now in its eighteenth year. The Prize, which has been described as the ‘world’s top poetry award’ (The Irish Independent) is awarded to the writer of the best new collection of poetry published in the UK or Ireland. It is unique as it is always judged by a panel of established poets and it has been described by Andrew Motion as ‘the Prize most poets want to win’.
The T. S. Eliot Prize is generously sponsored by the John S Cohen Foundation and supported by the T. S. Eliot Foundation. It is the richest prize in British poetry, with the shortlisted poets receiving cheques for £1,000 and the winner receiving a cheque for £15,000 from Mrs Valerie Eliot.
Submissions may only be made by publishers and the call for submissions goes out in June each year, with a closing date at the end of July.
The four Poetry Book Society Choices for the year automatically have a place on the Shortlist.
The ten-strong Shortlist is announced in October and then the judges meet again in January to decide on the winner. All ten poets are invited to read at the T. S. Eliot Prize Readings in January, the year’s biggest poetry event, and then the Chair of the Judges announces the winner at the award ceremony the following evening.
The T. S. Eliot Prize Shadowing Scheme is run each year in partnership with the English and Media Centre’s emagazine. Students are invited to shadow the judges by reading poems from the shortlisted collections and to taking part in a competition for the best rationale for their choice of winner and an online poll.
The Poetry Book Society will also be running a new T. S. Eliot Prize reading group scheme as part of the 2010 Prize. More details on this will follow shortly.
Author photo of Anne Stevenson © Carrie Hitchcock
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.
