The TS Eliot Prize is run by The TS Eliot Foundation (Hannah McKay/PA)
Poet Roger Robinson has won the 2019 TS Eliot Prize.
The writer and performer, who lives between London and Trinidad, was honoured with the £25,000 prize for his collection A Portable Paradise, which is described as a “scathing polemic and meditation on love”.
He was picked by judges John Burnside, Sarah Howe and Nick Makoha after months of deliberation.
Burnside, the chairman, said A Portable Paradise “finds in the bitterness of everyday experience continuing evidence of ‘sweet, sweet life’”.
Robinson has published two poetry pamphlets, Suitcase (2004) and Suckle (2009), which won the People’s Book Prize and the Oxford Brookes Poetry Prize.
His first full poetry collection, The Butterfly Hotel (2013), was shortlisted for The OCM Bocas Poetry Prize.
The TS Eliot Prize is run by The TS Eliot Foundation and is the most valuable prize in British poetry. As well as the winning poet receiving a cheque for £25,000, the shortlisted poets each receive £1,500.
