So hurray for Jen Hadfield, love her work, love the collection she won the T S Eliot prize with. Knew back in June when I blogged about Nigh-No-Place that this was something special, a crafted collection that still manages the joy of appearing to be just thought of, fresh and tumbling from the lips. Are prizes elitist, only for a special inner sanctum of poets who haunt the corridors of literary festivals and academia, as some would have us believe? I don’t know but what I do know is that Jen doesn’t fall into that category and hell, like most poets the money is important, it buys time to write and nurturing rare talent should not come cheap. So I am happy Jen won from amongst a very strong field of superb collections and I shall do a small dance round my kitchen to a Motown song to celebrate. Motown is celebrating its birthday today so a double cause to shake the crockery and rattle the pepper mill a little by an unleashed jig with some cool moves thrown in for good measure to Marvin and Tammi. I also finished the novel rewrites yesterday so triple cause to bop. Any excuse really.
Despite my pleasure about Jen Hadfield's win I was sadden to hear about the death of Mick Imlah, he was a fine poet and his loss makes the world of poetry a little smaller, a little lessened.
6 comments:
What a lovely post!
Yes, yay for Jen - and happy, happy birthday, Motown.
And saddening about the death of Mick Imlah. 52 is far too young to die.
I'm off to read your blogpost about Nigh-No-Place now.
Hello,
thanks for your coverage of the TS Eliot Prize. I work for the Poetry Book Society which runs the Prize. I see that you posted the news of Jen winning yesterday at 13.07. Without wishing to sound churlish, the press release was strictly embargoed until 19.35 that night when the announcement was formally made at the award ceremony (i.e. when Jen found out). We do this so the papers have time to prepare, but it's really unfair for the news to leak out like this.
Sorry Pinda but there must be something wrong with the clock system on this blogsppot as I only posted the blog about Jen Hadfield yesterday evening after I heard about it via the Guardian Online website. I am alas far too unimportant a lover of poetry to have any preknowledge of who had won, but I own up to my use of up to the minute newsfeeds on my computer now and then.
Have discovered the problem with the time I was set to Pacific Time, which is minus eight hours so I appeared to be eight hours or so ahead of myself all the time, I always knew there was some sort of Bermuda Triangle in the Fens. Hope this placates th ePoetry Society, wouldn't want to be dismissed from the ranks and have my Poetry Reviews shredded in front of my eyes as punishment.
Who would have known the poetry world had such good spies!
Good lawd, Writearound! And all this time I thought you were psychic ... :)
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