Tuesday 16 January 2018

Ocean Vuong wins TS Eliot Prize

This year's TS Eliot Prize winner is Ocean Vuong, for his debut collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds. I haven't read it yet, but I'll look forward to it. As always, there's been some debate on Facebook and other online forums about whether or not judges Bill Herbert, James Lasdun and Helen Mort chosen the right winner, but that's pretty much par for the course with such awards and competitions – the fact that they at least get people talking about contemporary poetry is partly the point of them, surely?

1 comment:

Poetry Pleases! said...

Dear Matt

I think that Sandeep Parmar's piece in the Guardian lamenting the lack of BAME poets on the shortlist might have heavily influenced the final decision. I really like Vuong's title but I also strongly suspect that in about a year's time, we will wonder what all the fuss was about.

Best wishes from Simon R Gladdish