Huge congratulations goes to Roger Robinson this year's winner of the T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize for 2019, for his poetry collection A Portable Paradise.
He is a writer and performer who lives between London and Trinidad.
He wins £25.000.00 for the collection and joins past winners of the prize, including, Hannah Sullivan - who won last year with her debuet collection Three Poems, Sharon Olds - shortlisted this year with her collection Arias, and who won in 2012 for her collection Stag's Leap that chronicled the end of her marriage with a visceral honesty and Sarah Howe - a judge this year and winner of the 2015 prize with her collection Loop of Jade that recorded her half Chinese herritage. The Chair ofthe judges, Pascale Petit praied Sarah for her "startling exploration of gender and injustice through place and identity... her daring experiment with form."
Judges John Burnside, Sarah Howe and Nick Makoha made the choice this year. Personally I don't know how they did it given the incredibly strong shortlist this year.
Perhaps I should take the advice of Ian Macmillan the presenter for the shortlist reading that took place at the Royal Festival Hall last night. He reads and re-reads the shortlisted collections over several months.
Click here for a link to the online newspaper Oxford Mail, the first online publication I could find that posted the news of the winner. I had been waiting impatiently following the BBC news, Radio 4, The Guardian and the Poetry Society. None of these posted the news. It's now 8.10pm. Oxford Mail posted the news 40 minutes ago.
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