The Roehampton Poetry Prize 2018 Shortlist Announced
- Monday, April 30, 2018
The Roehampton Poetry Centre is pleased to announce a shortlist of six authors for the annual Roehampton Poetry Prize.
The prize is given for the best poetry collection of the year written by a poet of any nationality who is currently living in the UK.
The 2018 Prize is judged by Fiona Benson and Nathalie Teitler, and chaired by Professor David Harsent (Chair of the Roehampton Poetry Centre and winner of the 2014 TS Eliot Prize).
Announcing the shortlist, Professor Harsent said: "The shortlist for the Roehampton Poetry Prize 2018 is a testament to the strength and diversity of both the poetry community in this country and to the work currently being produced. Compiling the shortlist was, for the judges, a task that looked easy but proved difficult. Easy, because the collections we finally selected are outstanding: each, in its own way, sure in its skill and compelling in its vision. Difficult, because so many of the books submitted for the prize were by fine poets whose work made its own strong and unignorable claim. Shortlists are always a close call. In the end it was these six books that most held our attention, most excited us, moved us, and impressed us with the risks they took, with their sureness of touch, and the depth of feeling they provoked in the reader."
The shortlist in alphabetical order (by author):
Kayo Chingonyi: Kumukanda (Chatto & Windus)
Sinéad Morrissey: On Balance (Carcanet)
Pascal Petit: Mama Amazonica (Bloodaxe)
Robin Robertson: The Long Take (Picador)
Hannah Sullivan: Three Poems (Faber)
Ahren Warner: Hello, Your Promise Has Been Extracted (Bloodaxe)
The prize is valued at £5,000 and the winner will be announced in May.
The Roehampton Poetry Prize is open to any collection of poetry in English, or first translation of a collection, not previously published in the UK.
Collections published between 1 April 2017 and 31st March 2018 were eligible for this year's prize, and poets of any nationality, living and working in the UK at the time of first publication were considered.