Start 2026 like you mean to go on

Ten books, ten poets, two mornings — what that amounts to I’m offering you is a deep dive into the ten books shortlisted for the UK’s biggest award for poetry, the TS Eliot Prize — started by the big man himself, and still going strong, bringing poets and poetry into the light and giving up something to talk about in the dull weeks of January.

Poetry — poems — are where we humans go, in every culture and across the expanse of time, to get something out. Or in. A true account. An escape from the draining need to explain everything. To make music out of words, even out of word salad. Poetry may famously ‘make nothing happen’ (though right after that line, Auden wrote, ‘It is a way of happening, a mouth’) — but it is also the news. THE news.

Poetry is where we go both to explain what’s happening, and to discover it. To explore meaning itself , what ‘meaning’ means — is it in the dictionary, in the sound, in combinations of sounds? Is it in the general Zeitgeist? Does it come from the interplay of different poems, different poets, the living and the dead? The read and the unread? Is meaning the actual crash that happens when you mash poetry up to other forms of understanding?

Or maybe poems are simply a way of playing?

Well! Come along and let’s talk about it. This workshop has been running for about 16 years now and every year the conversation happens again and we get some poems into our mouths.

We begin by agreeing that there’s no such thing as ‘best’; many books just as wonderful as these ten have been published this year and have not made it onto this shortlist. We know this. And knowing it frees us up to consider these ten as a snapshot, as a way in, as a path lined with tea lights leading through a wooded park.

Do you like poetry, or miss it from school, and you’d love to start reading it but you’re not sure where to jump in? Or do you write it, or study it, but find it hard to keep up? Or just love reading as much as you can? Any of these is a good way to get into this weekend workshop.

You don’t need to have read, or even heard of, any of the books — or the poets — in the image above. I’ll have made giant handouts. It’s all there to discover! By the end of the second morning, everyone will have a firm favourite, or three firm favourites, perhaps a firm anti-favourite (which might be someone else’s number one), and several other ideas about what or whom you’d like to follow up.

It’ll be just in time for the annual reading of all ten poets at the Southbank Centre on the 18th.

And then the next evening, we’ll find out who the winner is.

So how does it all work? We meet on Zoom, from 10am-1.30pm (with a break) for two mornings. You get a big handout from me the evening before each session covering five of the books, and then we meet in the Zoom room and read and chat and see what we think. It’s always huge fun.

Drop me a line to find out more or to join the sessions. If money is a critical issue, please let me know. There are some concessions available.

Hope to see you then!