Here are links to my reviews of the collections shortlisted for the 2019 T.S. Eliot Prize
Roger Robinson, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize, 2019
A Portable Paradise
‘Roger Robinson’s A Portable Paradise is a scathing polemic, and a meditation on love. It attacks the economies which saw Grenfell Tower clad with substandard materials. It stares unflinchingly at the legacy of slavery and yet, at its heart, it believes in kindness and community.’
Anthony Anaxagorou
After the Formalities
‘After the Formalities is a spectacular collision of the public and the private, of little lives and the breaking of nations. Anaxagorou writes against the context of the comments made by David Starkey on national television following the riots that shook the nation in the summer of 2011. Starkey said that ‘A substantial section of the chavs have become black’ and, referencing Enoch Powell’s 1968 ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, commented that Powell ‘was absolutely right in one sense. The Tiber didn’t foam with blood but flames lambent.’ Anaxagorou takes these trite remarks to task.’
Fiona Benson
Vertigo & Ghost
‘In Part One of Vertigo & Ghost, the fig leaf of culture is whipped away, and the weaponized phallus of the rapist is revealed. It’s an uncanny effect as, through history, some writers and artists have treated sexual violence as a pretext for a gawp: we’re desensitised to myths where rape no longer looks like rape. The integrity of Part Two supplants the salacious painterly gaze and breaks a few taboos with its look at the woman’s body.’
Jay Bernard
Surge
‘Surge meditates on the New Cross house fire which killed 13 young black people in 1981. It’s an enraged, elegiac, erudite collection which views London through a wide-angle lens, considering the murder of Naomi Hersi, a trans woman of colour, and the Grenfell fire as it reflects relationships between citizen and state.’
Paul Farley
The Mizzy
‘The Mizzy explores our changing relationships with landscape and society. Tyre swings strung from trees jostle with smartphones as the individual is pushed to the margins. Above all, it’s a wonderful collection of poems: even the title is a pleasure..’
Ilya Kaminsky
Deaf Republic
‘Deaf Republic cries out the miserable truth of every military occupation in an arresting, vivid, timeless exploration of resistance – and complicity.’
Sharon Olds
Arias
‘A heart-breaking, forensic exploration of fragility and mortality. It’s metaphysical poetry at its finest and Olds channels the fearlessness of John Donne..’
Vidyan Ravinthiran
The Million-petalled Flower of Being Here
‘The cover of The Million-petalled Flower of Being Here shows a Leonids meteor storm in 1833, people taking a break from the humdrum to look to the heavens in wonder. Ravinthiran’s sonnets offer something similar: moments in time bloom and we’re invited to stop for a moment and look.‘
Deryn Rees-Jones
Erato
‘Erato revels in the sheer joy of language and holds a mirror to society’s seamier, darker side. The collection comprises a series of prose poems, interspersed with formal lyrics. The poems work well in isolation, but Erato works best in conversation with itself.’
Karen Solie
The Caiplie Caves
‘The Caiplie Caves is the literary equivalent of a geological core sample, drilling deep into Fife’s history and, in so doing, Solie achieves a rich simultaneity of experience as she explores our relationship with space and place.’
Poor Rude Lines 