TS Eliot prize: the poetry award poets want to win
The TS Eliot Prize is the poetry award that poets want to win. In fact, there can be no doubt that it’s our most important and prestigious poetry prize.
Set up in 1993 to honour the best collection of new verse in English first published in the UK or Ireland, it’s previously been won by Carol Ann Duffy, Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes. It’s also our most valuable annual poetry prize – the winner receives £15,000 donated by TS Eliot’s widow.
But what’s perhaps more important for the nominated poets is that the prize can be instrumental in getting their work out to a wider audience. On Sunday night, for example, an audience of nearly 2,000 went to the Royal Festival Hall in London to hear this year’s nominees reading from their work. And clearly, the media coverage of the prize-giving event itself can provide a huge boost to sales of a collection of poetry.
This year’s nominees are John Burnside, Carol Ann Duffy, Leontia Flynn, David Harsent, Esther Morgan, Daljit Nagra, Sean O’Brien and Bernard O’Donoghue.
But you might have noticed that there are only eight poets on the shortlist rather than the usual ten. That’s because Alice Oswald and John Kinsella have both withdrawn their nominations in a row over funding.
Read more: Cuts and hedge fund deal dominate TS Eliot prize
The Poetry Book Society, which administers the TS Eliot Prize and was set up in 1953 by TS Eliot and friends, recently lost all of its regular funding from Arts Council England. Part of its solution to the problem has been to sign a three-year sponsorship deal for the prize with Aurum Funds, an investment management company that focuses on hedge funds. But in a written statement John Kinsella said that the business of Aurum “does not sit with my personal politics and ethics”. While Alice Oswald said that “poetry should be questioning not endorsing such institutions”.
The row comes amidst a growing movement protesting about what it sees as the “corporatisation” of the arts. Many believe that all art forms should be free to engage in the important issues of the day, which might include the financial crisis for example – and that this freedom to comment should be unhindered by any corporate sponsors.
Now there’s no suggestion that Aurum Funds might be this kind of sponsor. Or that any other corporate sponsors of arts prizes like the Man Group (the Man Booker Prize) or Orange (the Orange Prize for Fiction) have ever meddled in the editorial or creative side of their respective prizes.
Read more: John Burnside wins TS Eliot prize in controversial year
But there is concern in the US, where corporate sponsors are far more common, that arts organisations are starting to “self censor” their work, avoiding controversial material in a bid to make themselves as attractive and inoffensive as possible to corporate sponsors. Depending on who you speak to, this practice is widespread.
So where does this leave the TS Eliot Prize? Well, many people who work in the arts are becoming resigned to the fact that accepting money from big corporations is now a fact of life. And poetry is no different. In fact, of all the art forms, poetry has to be the least well rewarded financially. Many of our most successful and respected poets have to write in their spare time because they simply can’t make a living from poetry alone. But why should they have to struggle through life just to keep alive what many consider our national art? And surely if prizes like the TS Eliot were to disappear, it would become even more difficult for them to make a living from their work?
It seems that corporate sponsors for arts events like the TS Eliot Prize might become more common – at least in the near future. But those who struggle to accept this might take some consolation from TS Eliot himself. He spent the first half of his life working for Lloyd’s Bank and once admitted, “In my private life… I’m a bank clerk”. Perhaps proof that not all bankers are bad.
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