John Burnside, winner of last year’s Forward prize, has now taken the TE Eliot prize as well, for his collection Black Cat Bone. The TS Eliot prize became controversial after the original 10-strong shortlist was cut to eight when Alice Oswald and John Kinsella dropped out in protest over funding from the hedge fund Aarum. The prize’s organiser, the Poetry Book Society had sought help after losing its Arts Council grant. 

The national poet of Wales, Gillian Clarke, who chaired the judges, said: "Amongst an unprecedentedly strong and unusually well-received shortlist, John Burnside's Black Cat Bone is a haunting book of great beauty, powered by love, childhood memory, human longing and loneliness. In an exceptional year, it is an outstanding book, one which the judges felt grew with every reading."

Burnside was presented with the £15,000 cheque at a ceremony in London. Clarke defended the prize, the PBS and the sponsorship, pointing out that Valerie Eliot, the poet's widow, remains the biggest funder, and blamed the Arts Council cut – "for no apparent justifiable reason”.

Burnside was announced as the winner at the Haberdashers' Hall, in London, on Monday, and said afterwards: "I really was surprised, I was actually stunned that they chose me. I thought I could relax and enjoy the evening as I've had my piece of the pie, so when they said my name I thought there had been a mistake." Read Burnside's further thoughts on winning the award here.

The other remaining shortlisted  poets were Carol Ann Duffy, Leontia Flynn, David Harsent, Esther Morgan, Daljit Nagra, Sean O'Brien and Bernard O'Donoghue.