Taylor wins the £25k T S Eliot Prize for 'blazing book of rage and light'

Joelle Taylor has won the 2021 T S Eliot Prize worth £25,000 for C+nto & Othered Poems (The Westbourne Press), described as “a blazing book of rage and light". 

Chair of judges Glyn Maxwell and her panel Caroline Bird and Zafffar Kunial announced the winner from a 10-strong shortlist at a ceremony at the Wallace Collection in London on 10th January. 

Maxwell said: “We found it extremely hard to choose between 10 superb collections. The arguments towards the end were passionate and thoughtful, but the choice of the judging panel is Joelle Taylor’s C+nto and Othered Poems, a blazing book of rage and light, a grand opera of liberation from the shadows of indifference and oppression.” 

The shortlist also included Raymond Antrobus, Kayo Chingonyi, Selima Hill, Victoria Kennefick, Hannah Lowe, Michael Symmons Roberts, Daniel Sluman, Jack Underwood and Kevin Young. 

Taylor is an award-winning poet, playwright and author whose collections include Ska Tissue (Mother Foucault Press, 2011), The Woman Who Was Not There (Burning Eye Books, 2014) and Songs My Enemy Taught Me (Out-Spoken Press, 2017). She founded SLAMbassadors, the UK’s national youth slam championships, for the Poetry Society in 2001 and was its artistic director and national coach until 2018.  

She runs workshops in various settings and hosts the London-based night of poetry and music, Out-Spoken, is resident at the Southbank and has published plays and a short story collection.  

Taylor will receive the prize money of £25,000 and each shortlisted poet will receive £1,500 in recognition of their achievement in winning a place on the most prestigious shortlist in UK poetry.  

The award is the most valuable prize in British poetry and is run by the T S Eliot Foundation. It is the only poetry prize which is judged purely by established poets.  

Last year’s winner was Bhanu Kapil’s How to Wash a Heart (Pavilion Poetry).