Joelle Taylor's C+nto & Othered Poems makes TS Eliot shortlist

Those in the competition for the £25,000 award ‘should enter the stage and be heard in the spotlight’, say judges.

Two other shortlisted poets, Kayo Chingonyi and Selima Hill, have already had their collections shortlisted for the Forward prize. Zambian-born Chingonyi’s A Blood Condition looks at the African nation’s turbulent history as well as the origin of HIV in poems that the Observer’s Kate Kellaway called “quietly powerful”.

The TS Eliot prize for emerging contemporary poetry has unveiled this year’s shortlist looking at ten competitors who represent the voice of the moment.

Joelle Taylor’s latest poetry collection, C+nto & Othered Poems, is a personal account of butch lesbian counterculture in the 90s.“This is a book of silences,” she states in her preface, where the author directs us to witness scenes of intimacy, friendship, togetherness, grief and revelry as they draw together Taylor’s personal stories, and those arising from archives and interviews with other butch lesbians.

The award, which is run by the TS Eliot Foundation, was won last year by Bhanu Kapil for her collection How to Wash a Heart.

The winner of the 2021 prize will be unveiled in January.

The shortlist in full:

All the Names Given by Raymond Antrobus (Picador) A Blood Condition by Kayo Chingonyi (Chatto & Windus) Men Who Feed Pigeons by Selima Hill (Bloodaxe) Eat or We Both Starve by Victoria Kennefick (Carcanet) The Kids by Hannah Lowe (Bloodaxe) Ransom by Michael Symmons Roberts (Cape Poetry) single window by Daniel Sluman (Nine Arches Press) C+nto & Othered Poems by Joelle Taylor (The Westbourne Press) A Year in the New Life by Jack Underwood (Faber) Stones by Kevin Young (Cape Poetry)

www.joelletaylor.co.uk