Our friends at the T S Eliot Foundation have announced the prestigious T S Eliot shortlist! We're delighted to see six recent PBS Selections on the shortlist this year, including Anthony Anaxagorou, Deryn Rees-Jones, Vidyan Ravinthiran, Jay Bernard, Ilya Kaminsky and Fiona Benson.
According to the Guardian, the chairman of the judges, John Burnside described the shortlist as “some of the finest and most fearless poets working today... In an excellent year for poetry, the judges read over 150 collections from every corner of these islands, and beyond. Each had its own vital energy, its own argument to make, its own celebration or requiem to offer, and we knew that settling upon 10 from so many fine books would be difficult. Nevertheless, as our deliberations progressed, the same titles kept coming to the fore.”
The T S Eliot Prize is the UK's most valuable poetry award at £25,000. The winners will be announced in January 2020.
The 2019 TS Eliot Prize Shortlist
After the Formalities by Anthony Anaxagorou (Penned in the Margins)
Vertigo & Ghost by Fiona Benson (Cape Poetry)
Surge by Jay Bernard (Chatto & Windus)
The Mizzy by Paul Farley (Picador)
Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky (Faber & Faber)
Arias by Sharon Olds (Cape Poetry)
The Million-Petalled Flower of Being Here by Vidyan Ravinthiran (Bloodaxe)
Erato by Deryn Rees-Jones (Seren)
A Portable Paradise by Roger Robinson (Peepal Tree Press)
The Caiplie Caves by Karen Solie (Picador)
PBS Members can order the shortlisted books via the links above with their 25% member discount.