The T. S. Eliot Prize 2024

Raymond Antrobus, shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize 2024 for Signs, Music (Picador Poetry), was born in Hackney, London, to an English mother and Jamaican father. His previous collections of poetry are To Sweeten Bitter (Out-Spoken Press, 2017); The Perseverance (Penned in the Margins / Tin House, 2018); and All The Names Given (Picador Poetry / Tin House, 2021). Signs, Music is the Poetry Book Society Choice Autumn 2024. Antrobus has also written two illustrated books for children: Can Bears Ski? and Terrible Horses, both published by Walker Books. A number of his poems were added to the UK’s GCSE syllabus in 2022. The BBC Radio 4 documentary Inventions in Sound, which accompanies All The Names Given, was produced by Falling Tree Productions and won a Best Documentary Award at the 2021 Third Coast International Audio Festival. Antrobus now lives in Margate. Photo © Chantal Lawrie

Hannah Copley, shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize 2024 for Lapwing (Pavilion Poetry / Liverpool University Press), is a British writer and academic who works as a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Westminster. She is the author of two collections: Speculum (Broken Sleep Books, 2021); Lapwing, her second, was a Poetry Book Society Summer 2024 Recommendation and won second prize in the 2024 Laurel Prize. Her work has appeared in POETRY, The London Magazine, Anthropocene, Blackbox Manifold, Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, Stand, Under the Radar, bath magg, Annethology and other publications. She runs poetry events at the Soho Poly in London and is an editor at Stand, where she first started as a student volunteer. Photo © Nick Dennis

Helen Farish, shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize 2024 for The Penny Dropping (Bloodaxe Books), is the author of four books of poems. Her previous collections include: Intimates (Cape Poetry, 2005); Nocturnes at Nohant: The Decade of Chopin and Sand (Bloodaxe Books, 2012); and The Dog of Memory (Bloodaxe Books, 2016). Intimates, a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. The Penny Dropping was recently named among the Poetry Society‘s Poetry Books of the Year. Farish’s PhD thesis explored the work of Louise Glück and Sharon Olds. She has taught at Sheffield Hallam University and Lancaster University. Born near Wigton in Cumbria, she now lives in Cumbria. Photo © Phyllis Christopher

Peter Gizzi, shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize 2024 for Fierce Elegy (Penguin Poetry), was born in Alma, Michigan. He is the author of eleven collections of poetry, including: Now It’s Dark (2020); Archeophonics (2016), a finalist for the National Book Award; Threshold Songs (2011); In Defense of Nothing: Selected Poems, 1987–2011 (2014); and Sky Burial: New & Selected Poems, published by Carcanet Press in 2020. Gizzi has also published several limited-edition chapbooks, folios and artist books. Marjorie Perloff has called him ‘a master of the mot juste’; Robert Creeley, ‘one of the most exceptional poets of his generation’. Adrienne Rich has said ‘his disturbing lyricism is like no other’; and John Ashbery thought him ‘the most exciting new poet to come along in quite a while’. He lives in Holyoke, Massachusetts. Photo © Rick Myers

Gustav Parker Hibbett, shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize 2024 for High Jump as Icarus Story (Banshee Press), is a Black poet, essayist, and MFA dropout. Hibbett was born in the USA and currently resides in Ireland. They are a 2023 Obsidian Foundation Fellow, a 2024 Djanikian Scholars Finalist, and featured in 32 Poems as an Emerging Poet. They are currently pursuing a PhD in Literary Practice at Trinity College Dublin, where they are an Early Career Research Fellow at the Long Room Hub. High Jump as Icarus Story, is Hibbett’s first poetry collection. Photo © Abbie McNeice

Rachel Mann, shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize 2024 for Eleanor Among the Saints (Carcanet Press), is a priest, writer and broadcaster. She is the author of thirteen books, including her debut poetry collection A Kingdom of Love (Carcanet Press, 2019), and the acclaimed non-fiction Fierce Imaginings: The Great War, Ritual, Memory and God (Darton, Longman & Todd, 2017). Eleanor Among the Saints is her second collection. Mann is a Visiting Teaching Fellow at Manchester Writing School, and broadcasts regularly, including as a contributor to BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day. Born in the UK, she lives in Manchester. Photo © KTPhotography

Gboyega Odubanjo (1996–2023), shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize 2024 for Adam (Faber & Faber), was born and raised in East London. He was the author of three poetry pamphlets: While I Yet Live (Bad Betty Press, 2019); Two stops short of Barking (The Alternative School of Economics, 2021); and Aunty Uncle Poems (The Poetry Business / New Poets List, 2021), winner of the Michael Marks Award and an Eric Gregory Award. Adam is his debut full collection. A Barbican Young Poets alumnus, Odubanjo was an editor at bath magg and Bad Betty Press, co-chair of Magma and a member of the Roundhouse Poetry Collective, after which he later became a Roundhouse Resident Artist. He was a Creative Writing Tutor on the Creative Future IMPART programme, supporting writers from under-represented backgrounds. His UK garage single ‘LDN GRLS’ with Love Remain is out with the Sony Music UK label Black Butter Records. The Gboyega Odubanjo Foundation for low-income Black writers was established in 2023 to honour his legacy. Photo © Asare Debrah

Carl Phillips, shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize 2024 for Scattered Snows, to the North (Carcanet Press), is the author of seventeen books of poetry. They include Then the War and Selected Poems, 2007–2020 (Carcanet Press, 2022), which won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Phillips has also written three prose books, most recently My Trade Is Mystery: Seven Meditations from a Life in Writing (Yale University Press, 2022). After more than thirty years of teaching at Washington University in St. Louis, he lives on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Photo © Reston Allen

Katrina Porteous, shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize 2024 for Rhizodont (Bloodaxe Books), was born in Aberdeen and has lived on the Northumberland coast since 1987. Many of the poems in her first collection, The Lost Music (Bloodaxe Books,1996), explore the Northumbrian fishing community. Her second, Two Countries (Bloodaxe Books, 2014), was shortlisted for the Portico Prize for Literature in 2015. Edge (Bloodaxe Books, 2019) draws on collaborations commissioned for performance in the Life Science Centre’s planetarium, Newcastle, between 2013 and 2016, with multi-channel electronic music by the late Peter Zinovieff. Porteous often performs with musicians, and is particularly known for her radio-poetry broadcasts on BBC Radio 3 and 4. In 2021 she received a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors. Photo © Tony Griffiths

Karen McCarthy Woolf FRSL, shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize 2024 for Top Doll (Dialogue Books), was born in London to English and Jamaican parents. She is the author of three poetry books and the editor of numerous literary anthologies. As a postdoctoral Fulbright Scholar at UCLA, she was writer in residence at the Promise Institute for Human Rights. Her debut An Aviary of Small Birds (Carcanet Press, 2014), was an Observer Book of the Year and her second collection, Seasonal Disturbances (Carcanet Press, 2017), was a winner in the Laurel Prize. McCarthy Woolf has performed her work worldwide – in the US, Caribbean, Asia and across Europe at venues including the Royal Festival Hall, Barbican and Kings Place for Poetica Electronica, which showcased music collaborations with various dance and techno producers. Her poems have been translated into Turkish, Swedish, Spanish, Polish and Dutch, produced as an animated and choreographed short film, exhibited by Poems on the Underground and dropped from a helicopter over the Houses of Parliament. She was awarded a 2024 Jerwood Poetry Award by the Royal Society of Literature. Photo © Yasmine Akim