And the winner is ....
Gifted poet, Sarah Howe, whose debut collection Loop of Jade was awarded the T. S. Eliot poetry prize 2015 on Monday evening, January 11th at a ceremony which took place at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Howe, a fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute, was awarded the £20,000 prize for work which examines her dual British and Chinese heritage.
Howe beat many strong contenders and known names to the prize, including Don Paterson and Claudia Rankine, with Chair of Judges, Pascale Petit, saying that Howe’s work would ‘change British poetry.’
Loop of Jade is published by Chatto & Windus.
Steven Waling
Fri 15th Jan 2016 11:03
I think she's a good poet, from what I've read of her work. Mainstream, I suppose, but rather more adventurous than most. I think she might change that area of poetry and make it a bit more adventurous. No bad thing, as it was beginning to look extremely stale.
So I think she probably deserves the prize - and comments about 'ticking PC boxes' are not necessary frankly. It's actually a pretty good thing that a poet of colour and a woman has won the prize for what is, actually, very good quality work.
My point was not to do with whether she was or was not any good. I just believe quite strongly that she won't change the whole of poetry. Poetry - like music, like the visual arts - it's not one thing. It is a various art that takes different directions and has different groups and movements in it.
As an experimental/linguistically innovative poet myself, I doubt she'll affect much of my practice, and I doubt that many performance poets will be affected for instance. I doubt she'll have much impact on the traditional rhyming poets either.
I think it's part of the mainstream's feeling of superiority that makes it think that one mainstream poet will affect all poetry. The idea that they 'are' poetry and everything else is 'something-poetry' and not really poetry at all.