First collection vies with established names for TS Eliot prize

From The Guardian Thursday November 1, 2007

A debut poet, the National Poet for Scotland and the winner of this year's Forward prize for poetry are among the 10 poets in contention for this year's TS Eliot prize.

Frances Leviston's voice emerges cleanly and crisply from her debut collection, Public Dreams. Born in 1982, her work has already received recognition from the Society of Authors, which presented her with an Eric Gregory Award in 2006. However, she now finds herself pitched into competition with some of contemporary British poetry's leading lights.

Edwin Morgan, Leviston's senior by over 60 years, is widely regarded as one of Scotland's greatest living poets, while Sean O'Brien's scooping of the 2007 Forward prize for his latest collection The Drowned Book makes him the only poet to have won the award three times.

They are joined on the shortlist by the acclaimed poet, translator and editor of Poetry Review Fiona Sampson; Ian Duhig, who makes the shortlist for the third time; Sarah Maguire, the founder and director of the Poetry Translation Centre at SOAS; and Matthew Sweeney, whose Selected Poems were published in 2002. Also shortlisted are Alan Gillis, Sophie Hannah and Mimi Khalvati.

Widely regarded as the UK's most prestigious poetry accolade, the TS Eliot prize for the best new collection of verse in English now also claims the honour of being the richest award in British poetry.

Inaugurated in 1993 to celebrate the Poetry Book Society's 40th birthday and honour its founding poet, it is endowed by Eliot's widow, Valerie Eliot. She increased the prize fund this year from £10,000 to £15,000, with £1,000 for each of the shortlisted poets.

Described by the poet laureate Andrew Motion as "the prize most poets want to win", the TS Eliot prize is unique among poetry awards in being judged solely by established poets. This year's panel is chaired by the Whitbread award-winning poet Peter Porter, who is joined by poet and translator Sujata Bhatt and Newcastle University's professor of poetry WN Herbert. Porter praised the high quality of submissions for this year's prize which, he said, exhibited "the impressive diversity of contemporary poetry, and show not only a strong younger generation of writers but also the new heights achieved by established poets."

The judges' final meeting will take place on January 14, and the prize will be presented that evening by Valerie Eliot at a ceremony at the Wallace Collection in London.

The shortlist in full:

The Speed of Dark by Ian Duhig (Picador)

Hawks and Doves by Alan Gillis (Gallery Press)

Pessimism for Beginners by Sophie Hannah (Carcanet)

The Meanest Flower by Mimi Khalvati (Carcanet)

Public Dreams by Frances Leviston (Picador)

The Pomegranates of Kandahar by Sarah Maguire (Chatto & Windus)

A Book of Lives by Edwin Morgan (Carcanet)

The Drowned Book by Sean O'Brien (Picador)

Common Prayer by Fiona Sampson (Carcanet)

Black Moon by Matthew Sweeney (Jonathan Cape)