The ten shortlisted collections for this year’s T. S. Eliot Prize have been announced today.

Five of the shortlisted poets have been featured in previous editions of The Poetry Review: Raymond Antrobus’ Signs, Music (winner of the 2017 Geoffrey Dearmer Prize with ‘Sound Machine,’ which appeared in The Poetry Review Spring 2017); Helen Farish’s The Penny Dropping; Peter Gizzi’s Fierce Elegy – which features ‘Dissociadelic,’ as seen in The Poetry Review Summer 2022; Gboyega Odubanjo’s Adam – one of its poems, ‘A Story About Water’ can be found in The Poetry Review Autumn 2020; Karen McCarthy Woolf’s Top Doll. 

Also on the shortlist are: Hannah Copley’s Lapwing; Gustav Parker Hibbett’s High Jump as Icarus Story; Rachel Mann’s Eleanor Among the Saints; Carl Phillips’ Scattered Snows, to the North; Katrina Porteous’ Rhizodont.

Judges Mimi Khalvati (Chair), Anthony Joseph and Hannah Sullivan have chosen the T. S. Eliot Prize 2024 Shortlist from 187 poetry collections submitted by British and Irish publishers. On the shortlist, Khalvati said:

‘Our shortlisted poets are wonderfully diverse in style, theme and idiom, embracing myth, pop culture, sport, faith, trans identity, AI – a gamut of present and past life. Throughout these collections runs a strong strain of elegy, responding to our dark times with testaments of loss and grief. There is also humour, intimacy, joy and energy – poems to make you well up, to inspire you to write, and most of all to invite you to read.’

All ten of these books will be reviewed by the Young Critics, a collaborative project between Young Poets Network and the T. S. Eliot Prize. The books will be reviewed in videos uploaded to the T.S. Eliot Prize YouTube Channel later this year. You can watch last year’s videos here. 

The T. S. Eliot Prize 2024 Shortlist Readings will take place on Sunday 12 January 2025 at 7pm in the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall as part of its literature programme. Tickets for the Readings are now on sale and a live stream will also be available. The winner of the 2024 Prize will be announced at the Award Ceremony on Monday 13 January 2025.

For full information on this year’s Prize, visit the T. S. Eliot Prize website at tseliot.com/prize.

1 October 2024