Poetry professor on ‘clear and compelling’ T.S Eliot Prize shortlist
Professor Michael Symmons Roberts’ latest poetry collection is shortlisted for the 2021 T.S Eliot Prize as one of “ten books that sound clear and compelling voices of the moment”.
Ransom is in the running for the most valuable prize in British poetry, and the only major prize which is judged purely by established poets.
His poetry has previously won the Forward Prize, the Costa Poetry Prize and the Whitbread Poetry Award, and he has received major awards from the Arts Council and the Society of Authors. It is the fifth time that the Manchester Metropolitan University Professor of Poetry has been shortlisted for the £25,000 T.S Eliot Prize, following previous collections Burning Babylon, Corpus, Drysalter and Mancunia.
Ransom is described as an “intense and vivid exploration of liberty and limit, of what it means to be alive, and searches for the possibility of hope in a fallen, wounded world.”
Older and younger, wiser and wilder, well-known and lesser-known, these are the ten voices we think should enter the stage and be heard in the spotlight, changing the story
At the heart of the book are three powerful sequences – one set in occupied Paris, one an elegy for Professor Symmons Roberts’ father, and one a meditation on gratitude – “that work at the edges of belief and doubt, both mystical and philosophical.” It has already been recommended by the Poetry Book Society and is one of the Financial Times’ Books of 2021.
Professor Symmons Roberts said: “I’m delighted that Ransom has been chosen to be part of such a strong and exciting shortlist.”
T.S Eliot Prize
The 2021 shortlist, which is judged to be the best new poetry collection written in English and published in the UK or Ireland in 2021, consists of an eclectic mixture of established poets, none of whom has previously won the Prize, and relative newcomers. The list comprises one debut collection; work from six men and four women; one American; one poet from Ireland; as well as poets of Zambian and mixed-race ancestry, including Jamaican-British and Jamaican-Chinese.
I’m delighted that Ransom has been chosen to be part of such a strong and exciting shortlist.
Glyn Maxwell, chair of the judging panel, said: “We are delighted with our shortlist, while lamenting all the fine work we had to set aside. Poetry styles are as disparate as we’ve ever known them, and the wider world as threatened and bewildered as any of us can remember. Out of this we have chosen ten books that sound clear and compelling voices of the moment. Older and younger, wiser and wilder, well-known and lesser-known, these are the ten voices we think should enter the stage and be heard in the spotlight, changing the story.”
The T. S. Eliot Prize Shortlist Readings will take place on January 9, 2022 in the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall as part of its literature programme and the winner of the 2021 Prize will be announced at the Award Ceremony the following night.
