A week after Marlon James became the first Jamaican to win the Booker, the Jamaican-born poet Claudia Rankine has been shortlisted for the TS Eliot prize for poetry.
Rankine, whose collection of prose poems examining everyday racism, Citizen, has already won the Forward prize in the UK along with the NBCC award in the US, is one of 10 poets shortlisted for the £20,000 TS Eliot prize from a record 142 books submitted by publishers. “Jamaica has become the poetry – the literary – capital of the world at the moment,” said poet and chair of judges Pascale Petit, announcing the line-up.
Two first collections made the cut, Sarah Howe’s Loop of Jade, in which the Chinese-British writer journeys to Hong Kong to explore her dual heritage, and Rebecca Perry’s Beauty/Beauty. They are shortlisted alongside works by some of poetry’s biggest names, from Australian writer Les Murray, whose Waiting for the Past explores those things which have been lost in the modern world, to Sean O’Brien, whose The Beautiful Librarians celebrates “those unsung but central figures in our culture”, and Don Paterson, picked for 40 Sonnets.
“We read a lot of outstanding debut collections,” said Petit. “We’ve got quite experimental work from Rebecca Perry [and] Sarah Howe is a very interesting new voice, giving a glimpse into China, and what it’s like to be a Chinese woman.”
Petit said that “every book on the list is so ambitious – they’re reaching for the stars”. Tim Liardet is shortlisted for The World Before Snow, the result of the affair he began after meeting an American poet during a blizzard in Boston, Tracey Herd for Not in this World, inspired by both her own experience of clinical depression and that of the late actor Elizabeth Hartman, Selima Hill for Jutland, and the American poet and former TS Eliot prize winner Mark Doty for his ninth collection, Deep Lane. Murray, O’Brien and Paterson have also previously won the TS Eliot, Paterson twice.
“This is a fantastic year for poetry, with the highest amount of entries submitted in the history of the prize, and an exceptional number of outstanding collections,” said Petit, who was joined on the panel of judges by fellow poets Kei Miller and Ahren Warner. “This made our task of choosing the shortlist tricky – many that didn’t make it are books we love. But we were unanimous about our final list, the books my distinguished fellow judges and I picked all awed and excited us with their ambition, verve and technical mastery.”
The winner of the award will be announced on 11 January, and will receive a cheque for £20,000, donated by the TS Eliot Estate.
The shortlist in fullMark Doty – Deep Lane (Cape Poetry)
Tracey Herd – Not in this World (Bloodaxe)
Selima Hill – Jutland (Bloodaxe)
Sarah Howe – Loop of Jade (Chatto & Windus)
Tim Liardet – The World Before Snow (Carcanet)
Les Murray – Waiting for the Past (Carcanet)
Sean O’Brien – The Beautiful Librarians (Picador)
Don Paterson – 40 Sonnets (Faber)
Rebecca Perry – Beauty/Beauty (Bloodaxe)
Claudia Rankine – Citizen: An American Lyric (Penguin)
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