The T. S. Eliot Prize 2024

Raymond Antrobus was born in Hackney, London, to an English mother and Jamaican father. He is the author of To Sweeten Bitter (Out-Spoken Press, 2017); The Perseverance (Penned in the Margins / Tin House, 2018); All The Names Given (Picador Poetry / Tin House, 2021); and, most recently, Signs, Music (Picador Poetry / Tin House, 2024). He has also written a children’s picture book, Can Bears Ski? (Walker Books, 2020). 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 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), and Lapwing (Pavilion Poetry, 2024). Lapwing was a Poetry Book Society Summer 2024 Recommendation and has been longlisted for 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, the Anne-thology 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 is the author of four books of poems: Intimates (Cape Poetry, 2005); Nocturnes at Nohant: The Decade of Chopin and Sand (Bloodaxe Books, 2012); The Dog of Memory (Bloodaxe Books, 2016); and The Penny Dropping (Bloodaxe Books, 2024). Intimates, a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. The Dog of Memory was shortlisted for the Lakeland Book of the Year 2017. Farish was also a Writer of the Year Finalist in the Cumbria Life Culture Awards 2017. Her 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, born in Alma, Michigan, 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); and In Defense of Nothing: Selected Poems, 1987–2011 (2014). He 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 is a Black poet, essayist, and MFA dropout, born in the USA and currently residing in Ireland. They are a 2023 Obsidian Foundation Fellow, a 2024 Djanikian Scholars Finalist, and featured in 32 Poems as an Emerging Poet. High Jump as Icarus Story, published by Banshee Press in 2024, is their first poetry collection. 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. Photo © Abbie McNeice

Rachel Mann 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). She is a Visiting Teaching Fellow at The Manchester Writing School, and broadcasts regularly, including as a contributor to BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day. Her second collection, Eleanor Among the Saints, was published by Carcanet Press in January 2024. Born in the UK, she lives in Manchester. Photo © KTPhotography

Gboyega Odubanjo (1996–2023) 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, his debut full collection, was published by Faber & Faber in 2024. 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 is the author of sixteen books of poetry, including Then the War: And Selected Poems 2007–2020(Carcanet Press, 2022), which won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize. His latest poetry collection Scattered Snows, to the North was published by Carcanet Press in 2024. 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 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. Her fourth collection, Rhizodont, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2024. 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

Born in London to English and Jamaican parents, Karen McCarthy Woolf FRSL 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. Photo © Yasmine Akim