The T.S. Eliot prize for poetry
The (other) cocktail party
Jan 17th 2012, 17:23 by E.H. | LONDON
POETRY awards are not known for igniting controversy.
But this year, the T.S. Eliot Prize caused a stir worthy of the poet it is named after.
Two poets, Alice Oswald and John Kinsella, dropped out of the shortlist in December in protest against corporate sponsorship from Aurum, an investment firm, of the Poetry Book Society (PBS), which administers the award. (The three-year sponsorship arrangement came after PBS lost its Arts Council funding.)
This boycott caused something of a public furore, not least because the £15,000 prize money is still donated separately by Valerie Eliot, the poet's surviving widow and the biggest sponsor of the award.
Suddenly an event of marginal interest in the literary world had become a subject for the national press.
This may go some way to explain the slightly muted celebrations at the prize announcement in London last night, as many of us couldn't help but be distracted by the drop-outs, rather than the prize itself.
Following on from his earlier Forward prize win in October last year, John Burnside also earned this trophy for his 12th collection of poetry, “Black Cat Bone”.
He is the third poet to win both in one year, after Sean O'Brien in 2007 and Ted Hughes in 1998.
Giving him the award, Gillian Clarke, a poet and chair of the judges, praised “Black Cat Bone” as “a book of great beauty… it moves with faultless cadence.”
Mr Burnside writes “mysterious but not obscure poetry.
He is private but lets the reader in,” making his work “all the more thrilling for not being easily fathomed.”
Mr Burnside's poetry may not be easily fathomed, but he is easily one of the best loved out of the shortlist. As we wrote of Mr Burnside's work when he won the Forward:
Mr Burnside's acceptance of the award last night was elegantly to the point. Declining to make a speech (and thereby side-stepping the controversy surrounding the event), he read from his poem “Loved and Lost”, which describes how “love divulged is barely love at all: / only the slow decay of a second skin / concocted from the tinnitus of longing.”
This was a fine note on which to end what Ms Clarke described as a “tense and difficult” year for poetry, in light of both the prize's controversy and the loss of public funding in the first place.
As Mr Burnside quipped before reading his poem: “Perhaps it's better to have loved and won?”
Fuente: The economist
http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2012/01/ts-eliot-prize-poetry
De la redacción:
el poema completo:
Amado y perdido
But this year, the T.S. Eliot Prize caused a stir worthy of the poet it is named after.
Two poets, Alice Oswald and John Kinsella, dropped out of the shortlist in December in protest against corporate sponsorship from Aurum, an investment firm, of the Poetry Book Society (PBS), which administers the award. (The three-year sponsorship arrangement came after PBS lost its Arts Council funding.)
This boycott caused something of a public furore, not least because the £15,000 prize money is still donated separately by Valerie Eliot, the poet's surviving widow and the biggest sponsor of the award.
Suddenly an event of marginal interest in the literary world had become a subject for the national press.
This may go some way to explain the slightly muted celebrations at the prize announcement in London last night, as many of us couldn't help but be distracted by the drop-outs, rather than the prize itself.
Following on from his earlier Forward prize win in October last year, John Burnside also earned this trophy for his 12th collection of poetry, “Black Cat Bone”.
He is the third poet to win both in one year, after Sean O'Brien in 2007 and Ted Hughes in 1998.
Giving him the award, Gillian Clarke, a poet and chair of the judges, praised “Black Cat Bone” as “a book of great beauty… it moves with faultless cadence.”
Mr Burnside writes “mysterious but not obscure poetry.
He is private but lets the reader in,” making his work “all the more thrilling for not being easily fathomed.”
Mr Burnside's poetry may not be easily fathomed, but he is easily one of the best loved out of the shortlist. As we wrote of Mr Burnside's work when he won the Forward:
Mr Burnside concentrates on the inner life of the everyday, of “the legends we made / of passing cars, or switchyards in the rain”. It is the “sweetmeat of a heart / you thought would never grieve” that preoccupies Mr Burnside—and it is such longing and grieving that make his poems seem so tantalisingly fragile.At the prize readings the night before the announcement, held in the Southbank Centre's cavernous Royal Festival Hall, his short reading of five poems (and his confession that “I tend to rely on late-night television for my inspiration”) stood out for his easy manner and quiet poise before an audience of over a thousand people.
In giving Mr Burnside the award, the judges have made a bold move. They have recognised the strength that comes with seeming tentative.
Mr Burnside's acceptance of the award last night was elegantly to the point. Declining to make a speech (and thereby side-stepping the controversy surrounding the event), he read from his poem “Loved and Lost”, which describes how “love divulged is barely love at all: / only the slow decay of a second skin / concocted from the tinnitus of longing.”
This was a fine note on which to end what Ms Clarke described as a “tense and difficult” year for poetry, in light of both the prize's controversy and the loss of public funding in the first place.
As Mr Burnside quipped before reading his poem: “Perhaps it's better to have loved and won?”
Fuente: The economist
http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2012/01/ts-eliot-prize-poetry
De la redacción:
el poema completo:
Loved and Lost
- John Burnside
Give me a childhood again and I will live
as owls do, in the moss and curvature
of nightfall
-glimpsed,
but never really seen,
tracking the lane
to a house I have known from birth
through goldenrod
and alstroemeria;
while somewhere,
at the far edge of the day,
a pintailed duck
is calling to itself
across a lake,
the answer it receives
no more or less remote than we become
to one another,
mapped,
then set aside till we admit
that love divulged is barely love at all:
only the slow decay of a second skin
concocted from the tinnitus of longing.
Amado y perdido
- John Burnside
Dame una infancia de nuevo y viviré vislumbrando
como los hacen los búhos, en el musgo y en la curvatura
de la caída de la noche
-
pero realmente nunca visto,
seguir el camino
a una casa que he conocido desde mi nacimiento
a través de la calle de oro
y alstroemeria;
mientras que en alguna parte,
en el borde más alejado del día,
un pato "pintailed"
se llama a sí mismo
través de un lago,
la respuesta asignada que recibe
es ni más ni menos remota que cuando nos convertimos en
el uno al otro,
dejemos a un lado hasta que admitamos
que el amor divulgado es absolutamente apenas amor ,
sólo la lenta decadencia de una segunda piel
inventada del acúfeno del anhelo.
como los hacen los búhos, en el musgo y en la curvatura
de la caída de la noche
-
pero realmente nunca visto,
seguir el camino
a una casa que he conocido desde mi nacimiento
a través de la calle de oro
y alstroemeria;
mientras que en alguna parte,
en el borde más alejado del día,
un pato "pintailed"
se llama a sí mismo
través de un lago,
la respuesta asignada que recibe
es ni más ni menos remota que cuando nos convertimos en
el uno al otro,
dejemos a un lado hasta que admitamos
que el amor divulgado es absolutamente apenas amor ,
sólo la lenta decadencia de una segunda piel
inventada del acúfeno del anhelo.
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