John Burnside Wins T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry

Posted on January 17, 2012

John Burnside won the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry for his collection, Black Cat Bone (Jonathan Cape). The annual award is administered by the Poetry Book Society. Burnside will receive a cash prize of 15,000 pounds (about $23,000).

Gillian Clarke, Chair of the judges, said in a statement, "Amongst an unprecedentedly strong and unusually well-received shortlist, John Burnside's Black Cat Bone is a haunting book of great beauty, powered by love, childhood memory, human longing and loneliness. In an exceptional year, it is an outstanding book, one which the judges felt grew with every reading."

Poets Alice Oswald and John Kinsella withdrew their names from consideration for the T.S. Eliot Prize this year. They objected to the prize being sponsored by Aurum Funds, an investment bank.