2011 T S Eliot Prize for Poetry

The shortlist for this year's prize has been announced with all sorts of extra joiny-on goodness.

There's an affiliated Reading Group scheme with downloadable notes on the poems and poets, and suggested ideas for discussion.

Three poems from each of the shortlisted poetry collections are available to download.

It's well worth checking out the Poetry Book Society’s website as there are all manner of extras up for grabs.

Here's the list of titles - you can click on them individually to check on availibilty, or you can click here to bring up the whole list.

John Burnside Black Cat Bone
Carol Ann Duffy The Bees
Leontia Flynn Profit and Loss
David Harsent Night
John Kinsella Armour
Esther Morgan Grace
Daljit Nagra Tippoo Sultan's IncredibleWhite-Man-Eating TigerToy-Machine!!!
Sean O'Brien November
Bernard O'Donoghue Farmer's Cross
Alice Oswald Memorial

Just heard they've announced the 2011 Costa Poetry Award - there's a fair bit of cross-over, so we won't be doing a separate blog (don't want you getting poetry fatigue do we), but you can check out what we have here.

Jo Shapcott wins the Costa - bit of a shock apparently.

In a surprise result Jo Shapcott scores one for poetry and wins the Costa Book of the Year Award for her collection Of Mutability.

This is the second year in succession a poet has won the Costa and it is seen by many as heralding a resurgence of interest in the form.

Here's what the Costa people say -

Poet Jo Shapcott has won the 2010 Costa Book of the Year for her collection Of Mutability, her first new work in over a decade and in part influenced by her experience of breast cancer.

In Of Mutability, Shapcott is found writing at her most memorable and bold.  In a series of fresh, unflinching poems, she movingly explores mortality and the nature of change: in the body and the natural world, and in shifting relationships between people.  By turns grave and playful, arresting and witty, the poems in Of Mutability celebrate each waking moment as though it might be the last and, in so doing, restore wonder to the smallest of encounters.

Click here to read more about Jo Shapcott and hear her read some of her poems.

Ooh, strange feeling of deja vu then!

Derek Walcott wins T S Eliot Prize for Poetry

Derek Walcott has won the T S Eliot Prize for poetry for his collection White Egrets.

Sixty Years After by Derek Walcott

In my wheelchair in the Virgin lounge at Vieuxfort,
I saw, sitting in her own wheelchair, her beauty
hunched like a crumpled flower, the one whom I thought
as the fire of my young life would do her duty
to be golden and beautiful and young forever
even as I aged. She was treble-chinned, old, her devastating
smile was netted in wrinkles, but I felt the fever
briefly returning as we sat there, crippled, hating
time and the lie of general pleasantries.
Small waves still break against the small stone pier
where a boatman left me in the orange peace
of dusk, a half-century ago, maybe happier
being erect, she like a deer in her shyness, I stalking
an impossible consummation; those who knew us
knew we would never be together, at least, not walking.
Now the silent knives from the intercom went through us.

The shortlist for the 2010 T S Eliot Prize was:

Seeing Stars - Simon Armitage (Faber)
The Mirabelles - Annie Freud (Picador)
You John Haynes - (Seren)
Human Chain - Seamus Heaney (Faber)
What the Water Gave Me - Pascale Petit (Seren)
The Wrecking Light - Robin Robertson (Picador)
Rough Music - Fiona Sampson (Carcanet)
Phantom Noise - Brian Turner (Bloodaxe)
White Egrets - Derek Walcott (Faber)
New Light for the Old Dark - Sam Willetts (Jonathan Cape)

Click here to read more about Derek Walcott and hear him read some of his poems.

Online reading group at Poetry Book Society

The Poetry Book Society has launched an online poetry reading group.

The group, held on its online bookshop (www.poetrybookshoponline.com) will be free to join and open to all.

Two books will be discussed each month in specially commissioned articles: the first being The Forward Book of Poetry 2011, discussed by poet Ruth Padel, and Seamus Heaney's Human Chain, which poet Gwyneth Lewis will write about.

Enrolled reading group members will be given discount offers on the featured titles.