Philip Gross has won the 2009 T S Eliot Prize for Poetry with The Water Table, published by Bloodaxe Books. This is the second year in a row that a Bloodaxe poet has won the UK's most prestigious poetry prize. Jen Hadfield won last year's prize for her second collection, Nigh-No-Place.
Simon Armitage formally announced the winner at the T S Eliot Prize award ceremony last night, Monday 18 January, at the Wallace Collection in London, where Mrs Valerie Eliot presented Philip Gross with a cheque for £15,000. Each shortlisted poet received a cheque for £1,000, in recognition of their achievement in winning a place on the most prestigious shortlist in UK poetry.
The judges of this year’s Prize, Chair Simon Armitage, and fellow-poets Penelope Shuttle and Colette Bryce, reached their decision after months of deliberation and debate. The winner was chosen from a field of ten highly-regarded poets.
Simon Armitage said of Philip Gross' winning collection:
“A book of great clarity and concentration, continually themed but always lively and alert in its use of language. Gross takes us from Great Flood to subtly invoked concerns for our watery planet; this is a mature and determined book, dream-like in places, but dealing ultimately with real questions of human existence.”
Born in Cornwall in 1952, Philip Gross lived in Bristol and Bath for many years, and now lives in Penarth in South Wales.His previous collections include The Egg of Zero (2006), Mappa Mundi (2003), Changes of Address: Poems 1980-1998 (2001), The Wasting Game (1998) and several collections for children, including Scratch City (1995) and The All-Nite Café (1993). He has recently published I Spy Pinhole Eye, a collaboration with photographer Simon Denison, published by Cinnamon Press. He is also the author of tenhighly-praised novels for young people.He is currently Professor of Creative Writing at Glamorgan University. The Water Table is published by Bloodaxe.
Among the ten titles shortlisted for this year's T S Eliot Prize was another Bloodaxe title, The Burning of the Books and other poems by George Szirtes (who won the T S Eliot Prize 2004 for his collection Reel). Last year's prize was won by Bloodaxe author Jen Hadfield for her second collection Nigh-No-Place. At the age of 30, Jen was the youngest poet to win the prize.
BENJAMIN ZEPHANIAH VOTED THE NATION'S TOP LIVING POET
Benjamin Zephaniah has been voted third in the Nation's Favourite Poet poll organised by the BBC. He was the only living poet in the top 10, and came third after Eliot and Donne. For details see: http://www.bbc.co.uk/poetryseason/vote_results.shtml
For details of Benjamin Zephaniah's Bloodaxe titles, plus a selection of video and audio clips, see:
His first collection THE SINKING ROAD was published by Bloodaxe in 2008. For full details, plus video and audio clips of Paul Batchelor reading poems from his debut collection, see: http://www.bloodaxebooks.com/titlepage.asp?isbn=1852248076
Following his win, Paul Batchelor went to meet Edwin Morgan. To read his profile of Edwin Morgan in The Times, go to:
(The print version is illustrated with a large colour picture of Edwin Morgan and Paul Batchelor sitting together.)
C. D. Wright Awarded the International Griffin
Poetry Prize
Congratulations to C.D. WRIGHT, whose RISING, FALLING, HOVERING is the International winner of the ninth annual Griffin Poetry Prize ($50,000). Her latest collection is published in the US by Copper Canyon, and a large part of it forms the new poems section of her UK edition LIKE SOMETHING FLYING BACKWARDS: NEW & SELECTED POEMS (Bloodaxe Books, 2007): http://www.bloodaxebooks.com/titlepage.asp?isbn=1852247622
For more information on the Griffin Poetry Prizes, see:
American poet W.S. Merwin has been awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for his most recent book of poetry, The Shadow of Sirius, published by Copper Canyon Press in the US and to be published in the UK by Bloodaxe Books in November 2009. The $10,000 cash award honours the best book of poetry published by an American during the given year.
The Shadow of Sirius is Merwin’s twenty-fifth book of poems and has been described by Publishers Weekly as ‘his best book in a decade – and one of the best outright.’
Now 81, W. S. Merwin is one of America’s best-known and influential poets.He lived in England part of the time from 1952 to 1960 and an edition of his poetry was published in the UK in 1956.His work was unavailable in the UK thereafter untilBloodaxe Books published his Selected Poems in 2007, a representative choice of poems written over the course of fifty years. Neil Astley's anthology Bloodaxe Poetry Introductions: 3 (2007) includes a selection of his poems with extracts from interviews and other prose.
W.S. Merwin has been awarded most of the principal prizes in American poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize (1971 & 2009), the Bollingen Prize and the Tanning Prize and a Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award.Born in New Jersey City in 1927, he taught at several universities, and now lives on the Pacific island of Maui, where he tends to his writing and to his garden of rare and endangered palm trees.
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For further information or to place an advance request for a review copy please contact:
Christine Macgregor or Rebecca Hodkinson on 01434 240500
My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet’s Life in the Palestinian Century, by Adina Hoffman, will be published in the UK by Yale on 1 April 2009 (price £17.99, hardback).It is a work that Arabic scholar Michael Sells describes as 'among the five 'must read' books on the Israel-Palestine tragedy'.
Bloodaxe Books published the first UK edition of Taha Muhammad Ali’s poetry in 2007, So What: New & Selected Poems 1971-2005, a bilingual edition translated by Peter Cole, Yahya Hijazi & Gabriel Levin, which was made a Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation. For more details, go to: http://www.bloodaxebooks.com/titlepage.asp?isbn=1852247924
Taha Muhammad Ali was filmed reading four of his poems for the DVD-book In Person: 30 Poets filmed by Pamela Robertson-Pearce, edited by Neil Astley.Below is a clip of him reading the poem 'Abd el-Hadi Fights a Superpower' in Arabic, with Peter Cole reading his English translation:
BLOODAXE POET ELIZABETH ALEXANDER
READS AT BARACK OBAMA'S INAUGURATION
American poet Elizabeth Alexander read the inaugural poem at the swearing-in of President-elect Barack Obama on Tuesday 20 January. It was the first time that “poetry’s old-fashioned praise”, as Robert Frost called it, has been featured at the ceremony since Bill Clinton's second swearing-in back in 1997. The full text of the poem can be read here: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20545.
Born in 1962, Elizabeth Alexander is only the fourth poet to read at a swearing-in after Robert Frost, who read at John F. Kennedy’s in 1961; Maya Angelou, who read at Clinton’s in 1993; and Miller Williams, who read in 1997.
Elizabeth Alexander has published four books of poems in the US, and was first published in Britain by Bloodaxe Books, who brought out AMERICAN BLUE: SELECTED POEMS in 2006.
Read the full story in the Washington Post of 17 December 2008:
You can hear Elizabeth Alexander being interviewed about this on the podcast below:
OBAMAPOETICS Barack Obama's inaugural poet Elizabeth Alexander on how the Derek Walcott-toting, June Jordan-quoting president will affect poets and poetry. This "Poetry Off the Shelf" podcast from America's Poetry Foundation features Elizabeth discussing Obama and his relationship with poetry: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/audioitem.html?id=643
Elizabeth Alexander talks to CBS News about the challenge of being Barack Obama's inaugural poet:
JEN HADFIELD WINS THE
T.S. ELIOT PRIZE 2008
Jen Hadfield has won the T S Eliot Prize for her second collection, Nigh-No-Place. At only 30, she is the youngest poet to win the award, Britain's most prestigious poetry prize. She was presented with a cheque for £15,000 by T S Eliot's widow Valerie Eliot at a ceremony in London on Monday 12 January.
Andrew Motion, Chair of Judges, said:
"We are absolutely delighted that Jen Hadfield has won this year's T S Eliot Prize. Nigh-No-Place shows that she is a remarkably original poet near the beginning of what is obviously going to be a distinguished career."
Jen Hadfield was first published in 2005, when Bloodaxe brought out her debut collection, Almanacs. Her T S Eliot Prize-winning second book Nigh-No-Place was also shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection.
Jen Hadfield was one of three Bloodaxe poets to have collections shortlisted for The T S Eliot Prize 2008. The other two were Maura Dooley for Life Under Water and Moniza Alvi for Europa. Jen Hadfield is the second Bloodaxe poet to win this prestigious award, the first being George Szirtes, who won the T S Eliot Prize 2004 for his collection Reel. For more details of Nigh-No-Place, go to http://www.bloodaxebooks.com/titlepage.asp?isbn=1852247932
For further information or interview requests, please contact:
We are enormously saddened by the sudden death of Adrian Mitchell, one of our most beloved poets. He died on 20 December from heart problems following pneumonia.
Adrian was a prolific poet, playwright and children’s writer. His poetry’s simplicity, clarity, passion and humour show his allegiance to a vital, popular tradition embracing William Blake as well as the Border Ballads and the blues. His most nakedly political poems – about nuclear war, Vietnam, prisons and racism – became part of the folklore of the Left, sung and recited at demonstrations and mass rallies.
Born in London in 1932, Adrian worked as a journalist from 1955 to 1966, when he became a full-time writer. He gave many hundreds of readings throughout the world in theatres, colleges, pubs, prisons, streets, public transport, cellars, clubs and schools of all kinds. Many of his plays and stage adaptations were performed at the National Theatre as well as by the Royal Shakespeare Company and other theatre companies. In 2002, the socialist magazine Red Pepper dubbed him Shadow Poet Laureate and asked him to write regular republican poems for their columns. In a National Poetry Day poll in 2005, his poem ‘Human Beings’ was voted the poem that most people would like to see launched into space.
After Allison & Busby stopped publishing poetry, he brought his work to Bloodaxe. Adrian Mitchell’s Greatest Hits: His 40 Golden Greats (1991) was followed by four books covering 50 years of his work: Heart on the Left: Poems 1953-1984 (1997), Blue Coffee: Poems 1985-1996 (1996), All Shook Up: Poems 1997-2000 (2000) and The Shadow Knows: Poems 2000-2004 (2004).
Also scheduled for 2009 are his collected poems for children, Umpteen Poems (Orchard Books), and Shapeshifters, his versions of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, illustrated by Alan Lee (Frances Lincoln).
We will add links for other tributes when we have the details, including a piece by John Berger forthcoming in Red Pepper.
There will be a private family funeral early in the new year, followed later by a public memorial tribute event or events: details will be posted on the Bloodaxe website and Facebook page.
P.E.N. have just said that they want to do a special tribute event as part of their P.E.N. conference in London in April. Other events are planned in Newcastle and Wales.
Roger McGough will hosting a special tribute Poetry Please! programme in February.
Many thanks to Billy Fox on Shetland for the lovely photograph of Adrian, taken in September when he was Shetland writer-in-residence. Thanks also to Donald Anderson and all of Adrian's friends on Shetland. And many many thanks for all the messages of condolence and love for Adrian which we've been receiving!
[30 December 2008]
Adrian had been looking forward to being with his family and resting over Christmas. This was his last poem, intended as a Christmas gift for all the friends, family and animals he loved:
MY LITERARY CAREER SO FAR
As I prowled through Parentheses I met an Robin and a Owl My Grammarboots they thrilled like bees My Vowelhat did gladly growl
Tis my delight each Friedegg Night To chomp a Verbal Sandwich Scots Consonants light up my Pants And marinade my Heart in Language
Alphabet Soup was all my joy! From Dreadfast up to Winnertime I swam, a naked Pushkinboy Up wodka vaterfalls of rhyme
And reached the summit of Blue Howl To find a shining Suit of Words And joined an Robin and a Owl In good Duke Ellington’s Band of Birds
December 18, 2008
Merry Crambo and a Hippy New Year with love from Adrian Mitchell, The Shadow Poet Laureate
(I can’t write letters and it’s hard to phone yer as I recover from two months’ in Pneumonia so take this new riff with a glass of good wine and drink to Peace in 2009)
ADRIAN MITCHELL (1932-2008)
In January 2008 we filmed Adrian reading several poems for Bloodaxe's DVD-anthology In Person. Here we offer a film sequence with him three poems from that set: first 'Telephone', a short poem written on hearing of the death of his and Celia's beloved adopted goddaughter, Boty Goodwin. Then 'Especially When It Snows', his elegy for Boty. And finally 'Death Is Smaller Than I Thought', a poem on the deaths of his mother and father, which is a new poem from Tell Me Lies.
ADRIAN MITCHELL: "TELL ME LIES ABOUT IRAQ..." (2008)
Here Adrian reads what he called the 21st-century remix of his famous protest poem 'To Whom It May Concern (Tell me lies about Vietnam)'. He first read this poem at an anti-Vietnam War protest in Trafalgar Square in 1964, and kept changing the last verse. It became the title-poem of Tell Me Lies.
ADRIAN MITCHELL: "TELL ME LIES ABOUT VIETNAM..." (1965)
And here is Adrian reading the original version of 'To Whom It May Concern (Tell me lies about Vietnam)' at the International Poetry Incarnation in the Royal Albert Hall in London on 11 June 1965. This from Peter Whitehead's film Wholly Communion, courtesy Karl Dallas and YouTube.
POETRY AID TO RAISE MONEY FOR UNICEF
A novel means of fundraising from poet Kona Macphee
Poet Kona Macphee has come up with a fresh way of raising money for UNICEF. She has offered to sell the remaining copies of her first poetry collection,Tails, personally, and to donate the profit entirely to UNICEF.
To find out more about this exciting initiative, go to Kona Macphee's Poetry Aid website: http://www.konamacphee.com/. This has information about the book, reviews and author interviews as well as details of how to order the book and help raise funds for UNICEF.
MAHMOUD DARWISH
Mahmoud Darwish died, age 67, on Saturday 9th August at the Memorial Herman medical centre in Houston, Texas, from complications after heart surgery. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared three days of national mourning to honour the writer known as the poetic voice of the Palestinian people.
"The passing of our great poet, Mahmoud Darwish, the lover of Palestine, the pioneer of the modern Palestinian cultural project, and the brilliant national leader, will leave a great gap in our political, cultural and national lives," Abbas said. "Words cannot describe the depth of sadness in our hearts. Mahmoud, may God help us for your loss."
One of the most acclaimed contemporary poets of the Arab world, Darwish was a prominent spokesman for human rights who spent much of his life in exile. He returned to Palestine in 1996 and lived in Ramallah. His latest book of poetry to be published in English was The Butterfly's Burden (2007), a bilingual compilation covering three of his later volumes: The Stranger's Bed (1998), A State of Siege (2002) and Don't Apologise for What You've Done (2003).
Published by Copper Canyon Press in the U.S. and by Bloodaxe Books in Britain, The Butterfly's Burden is translated by Fady Joudah, a Palestinian American poet, translator and doctor, who was with Darwish when he was receiving medical treatment in Houston. Joudah's acclaimed translation has just won the prestigious Saif Ghobash-Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation.
Darwish made his first public appearance in Israel for 35 years only in July. His reading in Haifa - which was broadcast live on Arabic satellite TV - included a stinging attack on the rival Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah. Darwish was formerly a member of the PLO's Executive Council, and wrote the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence, resigning in opposition to the Oslo accords.
For a full biography, please see Darwish's pages on this website (which includes a video of Darwish reading to a typically huge audience in Jordan):
As well as Adrian Mitchell and Mahmoud Darwish (see above), four other poets published by Bloodaxe have died over the past year: Elizabeth Bartlett, Aimé Césaire, Inger Christensen and E.A. Markham.
Biographies for can be found on their author pages below:
