I am beginning to suffer from TS Eliot shortlist fatigue – do you know the signs? that heartsinking feeling when you open a much-heralded collection, hyped to the skies in a blurb on the back, and think to yourself on reading the first poems “WTF? I don’t understand a word of this”. At the same …
Tag archives: TS Eliot Prize
In the clouds with Shane McCrae
Of the T.S. Eliot shortlisted collections I have read so far, Shane McCrae’s “Sometimes I Never Suffered” gets the Oddball Prize for the moment. It contrasts the views of two very different characters, in different sections of the book. First, a “hastily assembled angel”: “the angels Had seen the creatures coming in the waves Then …
The Alien World of Ella Frears
Ella Frears’ collection “Shine, Darling” was shortlisted for both the Forward Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize. It is divided into three sections, the central one (titled Passivity, Electricity, Acclivity) reproducing a work that appeared as a “Goldsmiths Short” pamphlet. Passivity, Electricity, Acclivity weaves a number of narratives together in a sequence of small pieces, …