This week saw the announcement of Hannah Sullivan as the winner of this year’s T. S. Eliot Prize for her collection Three Poems. Sullivan is 39, and much of the commentary around her win has been centred on the fact that Three Poems is her debut collection. Prior to its publication, she was a virtual unknown.
One of the delights for me in reading the T. S. Eliot Prize longlist was the realisation of how difficult it must have been to call a winner. The shortlisted collections were radically different in terms of approach, subject matter and background, yet in terms of ability, standard of achievement, originality, depth and above all seriousness of intent there seemed barely a hair’s breadth between them.
Reading work of this standard offers a profound joy, most of all in its confirmation that such work – in the midst of everything writers face in the current climate – is still being done.
This week’s unveiling of the longlist for the Republic of Consciousness Prize – a relatively new award for works published in the UK by independent presses – offered a similar surfeit of joy. Presses like Stinging Fly and Galley Beggar, Carcanet and Charco and Splice are increasingly where the risks are being taken in British publishing, where the work is being done, where the idea of experimentation and revolt is actively welcomed. It is also interesting to note that of the thirteen books listed, almost a third are works in translation.
The work goes on, and that is cause for joy.
The 2019 Republic of Consciousness Prize longlist is here. You can hear an interview with Hannah Sullivan at the Guardian books podcast here. I found it inspirational, and Sullivan’s previous book The Work of Revision sounds tremendous.