Congratulations to our Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, Dr Hannah Lowe, who has been shortlisted for the 2021 T.S. Eliot Prize (and the 2021 Costa Poetry Award), respectively, for her latest collection of modern sonnets called The Kids.
The Kids has been added to the T.S. Eliot Prize 2021 shortlist from a record 177 poetry collections submitted by British and Irish publishers. The T.S. Eliot Prize, for the best new poetry collection written in English and published in 2021 in the UK or Ireland, is the most valuable prize in British poetry – with the winning poet receiving a cheque for £25,000.
Dr Lowe reflected: “I’ve been dreaming of being on this shortlist since I began my life in poetry. It’s an amazing list this year – I am delighted to have been shortlisted among old and new poetry friends”.
Dr Lowe taught for a decade in an inner-city London sixth form before joining Brunel University London. At the heart of this book are fictionalised portraits of ‘The Kids’, the students she nurtured. But the poems go further, meeting her own child self as she comes of age in the riotous 80s and 90s, later bearing witness to her small son learning to negotiate contemporary London. These energetic poems explore the universal experience of what it is to be taught, to learn and to teach.
The T. S. Eliot Prize Shortlist Readings will take place on Sunday, 9 January 2022 in the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, hosted by Ian McMillan.
The Kids by Hannah Lowe (Bloodaxe £10.99)