Friday, October 23, 2015

TS Eliot poetry prize shortlist stretches to Jamaica and beyond

Claudia Rankine joins past prize winners and debut authors on a shortlist that encompasses questions of racial identity, depression, love affairs and librarians

Jamaican-born poet Claudia Rankine: her book Citizen explores racism in western society.
‘Reaching for the stars’ ... the Jamaican-born poet Claudia Rankine. Photograph: Ricardo DeAratanha/LA Times via Getty Images
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.
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