Tag: winner

JASON ALLEN-PAISANT WINS ELIOT PRIZE WITH COLLECTION OF ‘NERVE, STYLE AND INTEGRITY’

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Jason Allen-Paisant, winner, T. S. Eliot Prize 2023. Photo © Adrian Pope for the T. S. Eliot Prize

The T. S. Eliot Foundation is delighted to announce the winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize 2023 is Jason Allen-Paisant for his second collection Self-Portrait as Othello, published by Carcanet Press.

The judges Paul Muldoon (Chair), Sasha Dugdale and Denise Saul said:

‘Self-Portrait as Othello is a book with large ambitions that are met with great imaginative capacity, freshness and technical flair. As the title would suggest, the poetry is delivered with theatricality and in a range of voices and registers, across geographies and eras. It takes real nerve to pull off a work like this with such style and integrity. We are confident that Self-Portrait as Othello is a book to which readers will return for many years.’

Judges Paul Muldoon (Chair), Sasha Dugdale and Denise Saul chose the T. S. Eliot Prize 2023 Shortlist from 186 poetry collections submitted by British and Irish publishers. The list comprises a former winner and two previously shortlisted poets, as well as two debuts and two second collections. Poets hail from the UK, Ireland, Jamaica, Hong Kong and the USA.

Jason Allen-Paisant is a Jamaican writer and academic who works as a senior lecturer in Critical Theory and Creative Writing at the University of Manchester. He’s the author of two poetry collections, Thinking with Trees (Carcanet Press, 2021), winner of the 2022 OCM Bocas Prize for poetry, and Self-Portrait as Othello (Carcanet Press, 2023), which won the Forward Prize for Best Collection. His non-fiction book, Scanning the Bush, will be published by Hutchinson Heinemann later this year. He lives in Leeds.

The judges announced Jason Allen-Paisant as the winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize 2023 on Monday 15 January, at the award ceremony held at the Wallace Collection, London. On Sunday 14 January the shortlisted poets read at the Royal Festival Hall, London; this is the largest annual poetry event in the UK. An audio version of the Readings will be available on the T. S. Eliot Prize YouTube channel shortly.

Jason Allen-Paisant will receive the winner’s prize money of £25,000. Each shortlisted poet will receive £1,500 in recognition of their achievement in winning a place on the most prestigious shortlist in UK poetry.

You can view videos of Jason reading from Self-Portrait as Othello and hear him talking about his work on the T. S. Eliot Prize YouTube channel.

‘I SEE YOU’VE TRAVELLED SOME WAY; BUT WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU GOING?’ – DON PATERSON, A TWO-TIME WINNER OF THE T. S. ELIOT PRIZE, REFLECTS ON HIS EXPERIENCES

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In 2023 the T. S. Eliot Prize celebrates its 30th anniversary. We’re marking the occasion by looking back at the collections which have won ‘the Prize poets most want to win’ (Sir Andrew Motion).


Don Paterson is the only poet to have won the T. S. Eliot Prize twice: in 1997 for God’s Gift to Women and in 2003 for Landing Light (both published by Faber & Faber). In commending Landing Light, Chair of judges George Szirtes said: ‘[Don Paterson] offers what Eliot demanded: complexity and intensity of emotion, an intuitive understanding of tradition and what it makes possible, and, at the same time, a freshness that is like clear spring water. His work is superbly authoritative, deeply felt, playful and properly ambitious.’

We asked Don to reflect on his experience as an Eliot Prize winner. He wrote:

As they say in cybernetics, the purpose of a system is what it does. How might the POSIWID rule apply to prize system? Sure, prizes reward, however capriciously, or unfairly, or incommensurately, or strangely. But what they also do, consistently, is make authors very self-conscious, especially in regard to what they might do next. Prizes will ‘bring things out in you’. In my case, winning the Eliot for God’s Gift to Women let me take myself seriously as a poet, which was a good thing, as I was at the time in danger of putting less important things – or at least things I was less good at, but found more enjoyable – before poetry. Winning it again for Landing Light left me in danger of taking myself too seriously altogether. Initially, I probably did. But the other thing prizes like the Eliot bring you is critical attention. This is always good, for all it may not feel that way at the time. I recall a pretty brutal review by Robert Potts titled ‘None More Black’; the title references Nigel Tufnell’s famous remark on how much more black the cover of Spinal Tap’s Smell the Glove album could have been. Even I could laugh. And on the strength of it, I decided I should maybe stop thinking of the poem as a kind of light-subtraction gun. 
     Prizes acquaint you with your luck, not your talent, which only the decades will confirm. (At least ‘thinking you deserve it’ isn’t an option for recovering Calvinists. If a tenner on a scratchcard feels like a smack in the face, a prize is like being hit by a truck.) You shouldn’t forget that your book has been the beneficiary of a literary fashion; it would’ve fallen foul of another. But I remain overwhelmingly grateful that I was fortunate enough to be disrupted in whatever path I was taking. A path without disruption is mostly likely one which, in the end, only you have any interest in pursuing. There are always better ones, but you won’t find them without the instruction to stop and take a long look at the map, or without someone asking ‘I see you’ve travelled some way; but where the hell are you going?

Don Paterson was born in Dundee in 1963. As well as the T. S. Eliot Prize, his poetry has won many awards, including the Whitbread Poetry Prize, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Costa Poetry Award and all three Forward Prizes. He was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2009. He is Professor of Poetry at the University of St Andrews and, for over twenty-five years, was Poetry Editor at Picador. He also works as a jazz musician.

ABOUT THE T. S. ELIOT PRIZE

The T. S. Eliot Prize celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2023. Awarded annually to the best new poetry collection published in the UK and Ireland, the Prize was founded by the Poetry Book Society in 1993 to celebrate the PBS’s 40th birthday and to honour its founding poet. It has been run by The T. S. Eliot Foundation since 2016. For more on the history of the Prize, visit tseliot.com/prize

The judges of the T. S. Eliot Prize 2023 are Paul Muldoon (Chair), Sasha Dugdale and Denise Saul. The 2023 shortlist will be announced in September and the Shortlist Readings will be held on 14 January 2024 at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall; tickets will go on sale later this year. The winner of the 2023 Prize will be announced at the Award Ceremony on 15 January 2024.

Sign up to the T. S. Eliot Prize e-newsletter for regular updates about the award. It includes poems and specially commissioned video readings by our shortlisted poets, plus interviews, biographical information, reviews, Readers’ Notes, and news and offers from across the poetry world.

A SPOTLIGHT SUDDENLY SWITCHED ON: JOELLE TAYLOR ON WINNING THE T. S. ELIOT PRIZE

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In 2023 the T. S. Eliot Prize celebrates its 30th anniversary. We’re marking the occasion by looking back at the collections which have won ‘the Prize poets most want to win’ (Sir Andrew Motion).

When Joelle Taylor’s collection, C+nto and Othered Poems, won the T. S. Eliot Prize, Chair of judges Glyn Maxwell hailed it as ‘a blazing book of rage and light, a grand opera of liberation from the shadows of indifference and oppression’.

We asked Joelle to reflect on her experience as an Eliot Prize winner. She wrote:

Winning the T. S. Eliot Prize has been a transformative experience. It is hard to describe what it is like to inhabit a stage for most of your life but still not be seen. I was used to the invisibility, wore it like a flag at times. When C+nto won it was as though a spotlight were suddenly switched on in the theatre and I was fully lit from every angle. It meant that my words were visible, and that visibility has led to my first novel The Night Alphabet being published, among many other wonderful moments. My first tour after winning sold out, and I achieved my ambition of playing Sydney Opera House. But the real gift is that for the first time I feel as though I can write, that I have a right to write. I’m indebted to the judges and the Prize, and am running hard at every opportunity it offers me.

Joelle Taylor is an award-winning poet, playwright and author who has published four collections of poetry. She has published three plays and her novel, The Night Alphabet, will be published by river run in 2024. Joelle founded SLAMbassadors, the UK’s national youth slam championships, for The Poetry Society in 2001 and was its Artistic Director and National Coach until 2018. She is the host of London’s premier night of poetry and music, Out-Spoken, currently resident at the Southbank Centre. As an educator she has led workshops and residencies in schools, prisons, youth centres, refugee groups, and other settings. (Joelle Taylor photo © Adrian Pope.)

ABOUT THE T. S. ELIOT PRIZE

The T. S. Eliot Prize celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2023. Awarded annually to the best new poetry collection published in the UK and Ireland, the Prize was founded by the Poetry Book Society in 1993 to celebrate the PBS’s 40th birthday and to honour its founding poet. It has been run by The T. S. Eliot Foundation since 2016. For more on the history of the Prize, visit tseliot.com/prize

The judges of the T. S. Eliot Prize 2023 are Paul Muldoon (Chair), Sasha Dugdale and Denise Saul. The 2023 shortlist will be announced in September and the Shortlist Readings will be held on 14 January 2024 at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall; tickets will go on sale later this year. The winner of the 2023 Prize will be announced at the Award Ceremony on 15 January 2024.

Sign up to the T. S. Eliot Prize e-newsletter for regular updates about the award. It includes poems and specially commissioned video readings by our shortlisted poets, plus interviews, biographical information, reviews, Readers’ Notes, and news and offers from across the poetry world.