Last call for the annual TS Eliot Prize Shortlist workshop!

And what a shortlist it is. I feel like this one is going to be pretty epic.

This year’s shortlist isn't just a pile of books; it's like a made object, the way a collection of poems is a made object; there are all sorts of echoes sounding throughout, notes appearing from book to book — in tone, in content, in language and music, in theme… It's a fantastically inspiring snapshot of Right Now.

I was tempted the other day to describe the feeling I’ve been getting as 'urgent', though I really hate that word in book-review-speak. Certainly much of the content is urgent, particularly in terms of nature poetry. But there are other themes running through as well — fathers, fatherhood and masculinity, grief, elegy and longing, different approaches to story and narrative and sequences, relationships (of course), birds; even religion and myth, history and hearsay, gods and monsters…

It isn’t just the richness of the content, either. It’s the language — the argot, the patois, the Multicultural London English, the music of words pushing against their constraints — and I said this word, ‘urgent’, about one of the books (no spoilers here, not one day before the workshop!) to my friend Fran Lock — herself an Eliot shortlistee from last year — and she replied, ‘It's solid, though, right? I get what you mean about ‘urgency’, but it absolutely does have a feral energy to it, like the language is always trying to get away from itself, to push beyond...’

And THAT is the point of poetry. It's true of so many of these books. Not all of them — a couple feel more sculpted, chiselled — and this is another conversation to have.

I'm dying to talk about all this, and very glad I'll get the chance tomorrow. At about 9pm today I will be sending out the handout for tomorrow morning to anyone who’s on the list and I’m excited.

Check the homepage of my website for info, or just go straight to the booking page.

Join us if you can!