Joseph wins £25k T S Eliot Prize with 'luminous' Sonnets for Albert

Anthony Joseph has won the £25,000 T S Eliot Prize for his "luminous" collection, Sonnets for Albert (Bloomsbury), following a record submission of 201 poetry collections.

Joseph was announced as the winner at a ceremony at the Wallace Collection in London on 16th January. He said he was "speechless" to have received the award, joking "I’ve been in this for a long time, you can see the grey beard".

He was chosen by judges Jean Sprackland, Hannah Lowe and Roger Robinson from a shortlist of 10 poets, beating entries from Victoria Adukwei Bulley, Fiona Benson, Jemma Borg, Philip Gross, Zaffar Kunial, Mark Pajak, James Conor Patterson, Denise Saul and Yomi Ṣode. Each of the shortlisted poets receives £1,500. 

Previous winners of the prestigious award, which was launched in 1993, include Anne Carson, Carol Ann Duffy, Derek Walcott and Ocean Vuong. 

A poet, novelist, academic and musician, Joseph has received numerous accolades for his work. He was the Colm Tóibín Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Liverpool in 2018, was awarded a Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship 2019/20 and is a lecturer in creative writing at King’s College London. He is also the author of five poetry collections: Desafinado, Teragaton, Bird Head Son, Rubber Orchestras and, most recently, Sonnets for Albert (all published by Bloomsbury), in which Joseph unpacks his complex relationship with his father. 

Born in Trinidad and currently living in London, he has also written three novels: The African Origins of UFOs (Salt), Kitch: A Fictional Biography of a Calypso Icon (Peepal Tree Press), which was shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, the Royal Society of Literature’s Encore Award and longlisted for the 2019 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. and The Frequency of Magic (Peepal Tree Press). As a musician, Joseph has released eight critically acclaimed albums.

Chair of the judging panel Sprackland said: “Each of the 10 books on this year’s shortlist spoke powerfully to us in its own distinctive voice. From this strong field our choice is Anthony Joseph’s Sonnets for Albert, a luminous collection which celebrates humanity in all its contradictions and breathes new life into this enduring form.”

Last year’s winner was Joelle Taylor for her collection C+nto & Othered Poems (The Westbourne Press).