Closer Reading

On the T. S. Eliot Prize

On Monday evening the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry was awarded to Jason Allen-Paisant for Self-Portrait as Othello, published by Carcanet – a second ‘gong’, as they say, along with the Forward Prize in the autumn. It was an impressive field¹, though with the usual caveats about those who missed out this time voiced in the run-up, the aftermath and, sometimes a little too loudly, on the night itself.²