The Poetry Book Society (PBS), the U.K. institution founded in 1953 by T. S. Eliot and friends, has announced the shortlist of poetry books up for its 2009 T. S. Eliot Prize. The award, worth fifteen thousand pounds (nearly twenty-five thousand dollars), will celebrate a book of verse first published in the United Kingdom or Ireland this year by any poet writing in English.
The finalists are:
The Sun-fish (Gallery Press) by Eiléan Ní Chuilleánain
Continental Shelf (Carcanet Press) by Fred D'Aguiar
Over (Oxford Poets) by Jane Draycott
The Water Table (Bloodaxe Books) by Philip Gross
Through the Square Window (Carcanet Press) by Sinéad Morrissey
One Secret Thing (Jonathan Cape) by Sharon Olds
Weeds & Wild Flowers (Faber and Faber) by Alice Oswald
A Scattering (Areté Books) by Christopher Reid
The Burning of the Books and Other Poems (Bloodaxe Books) by George Szirtes
West End Final (Faber and Faber) by Hugo Williams
The winner will be revealed on January 18, whereupon each of the finalists will be awarded an honorarium of one thousand pounds (a little over sixteen hundred dollars).
British poet Jen Hadfield won last year's award for her second collection, Nigh-No-Place (Bloodaxe Books, 2008). Past recipients of the prize, considered the most lucrative poetry honor in Great Britain, include current U.K. poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, Anne Carson, Mark Doty, and Paul Muldoon. The full list of winners since the award's inception in 1993 is available on the PBS Web site.