{"id":9332,"date":"2000-01-17T19:30:44","date_gmt":"2000-01-17T19:30:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tse.spyrosntanos.com\/?p=9332"},"modified":"2025-06-13T10:29:26","modified_gmt":"2025-06-13T09:29:26","slug":"hugo-williams-wins-the-t-s-eliot-prize-1999-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/prize\/hugo-williams-wins-the-t-s-eliot-prize-1999-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Hugo Williams wins the T. S. Eliot Prize 1999"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article on the early years of the T. S. Eliot Prize was written and added to the website in 2025.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"The winner of T. S. Eliot Prize 1999 was Hugo Williams for his collection Billy\u2019s Rain<\/em> (Faber & Faber). Williams was awarded \u00a35,000, the generous gift of Mrs Valerie Eliot, at the Award Ceremony in London on 17 January 2000.<\/p>\n

The judges were Blake Morrison (Chair), Selima Hill and Jamie McKendrick. Blake Morrison said:<\/p>\n

Hugo Williams\u2019s Billy\u2019s Rain<\/em>, a seemingly artless book about a love affair, simple in its diction, painfully direct in what’s described \u2013 and yet the more you read it, the more you see going on in it, as masks, mirrors, paradoxes, divided loyalties and blurred identities complicate the picture. For all the clipped tone, there are lines so lacerating you wonder how the poet wrote them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Williams\u2019s collection was chosen from 80 submissions which produced the shortlist of ten books:<\/p>\n

Anne Carson \u2013 Autobiography of Red<\/em> (Cape Poetry)<\/p>\n

Carol Ann Duffy \u2013 The World\u2019s Wife<\/em> (Picador Poetry)<\/p>\n

Paul Durcan \u2013 Greetings to our Friends in Brazil<\/em> (Harvill Press)<\/p>\n

Michael Hofmann \u2013 Approximately Nowhere<\/em> (Faber & Faber)<\/p>\n

Kathleen Jamie \u2013 Jizzen<\/em> (Picador Poetry)<\/p>\n

Michael Laskey \u2013 The Tightrope Wedding<\/em> (Smith\/Doorstop)<\/p>\n

Bernard O\u2019Donoghue \u2013 Here Nor There<\/em> (Chatto & Windus)<\/p>\n

Tom Paulin \u2013 The Wind Dog<\/em> (Faber & Faber)<\/p>\n

C. K. Williams \u2013 Repair<\/em> (Bloodaxe Books)<\/p>\n

Hugo Williams \u2013 Billy\u2019s Rain<\/em> (Faber & Faber)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This article, compiled from contemporary reports, has been published to provide a fuller picture of the T. S. Eliot Prize history. <\/em><\/p>\n

The T. S. Eliot Prize was inaugurated by the Poetry Book Society in 1993 to mark the Poetry Book Society\u2019s fortieth birthday, and to honour its founding poet. The T. S. Eliot estate has provided the prize money since the Prize\u2019s inception, and the T. S. Eliot Foundation took over the running of the Prize in 2016, following Inpress Books\u2019 acquisition of the PBS.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article on the early years of the T. S. Eliot Prize was written and added to the website in 2025.   The winner of T. S. Eliot Prize 1999 was Hugo Williams for his collection Billy\u2019s Rain (Faber & Faber). Williams was awarded \u00a35,000, the generous gift of Mrs Valerie Eliot, at the Award […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/prize\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/prize\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/prize\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/prize\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/prize\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9332"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/prize\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10579,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/prize\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9332\/revisions\/10579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/prize\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/prize\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/prize\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}