A Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Poetry, 1960 - 2015. Группа авторов
Books must be submitted directly by publishers, not by authors. Authors of submitted books must have been resident in the United Kingdom or Ireland for over six months of each of the previous three years (although UK or Irish nationality is not essential). Books must have been first published in the UK or Ireland between 1 November of the previous year and 31 October of the current year. Books previously published elsewhere are not eligible.
The jury for each category consists of three judges: usually, an author, a bookseller, and a journalist, who select a shortlist of four collections from which they proceed to choose the winner. The Costa Book of the Year is selected by a panel of nine judges, which includes five authors, one from each of the five categories; the Costa Chairman; and “three other people in the public eye who love reading.” In an interview for Poetry Salzburg Review, Burnside, who was the author judge for the poetry category in 2013, points out some of the problems of the Costa Book Awards and critiques them:
I very passionately went in to try to get the poetry book to win, but the others … they liked the poetry book, but they felt that it wasn't as substantial a piece of literary work as a novel. I don't know why people think that [laughs]. That's the view. And also you have the arguments that come and say – we are talking to a wider public, we are trying to get people to read. If you're going to give them something which is going to mystify them … The poetry that I was fighting for was Michael Symmons Roberts's book Drysalter (2013), which I think with a bit of application anybody could read, with a bit of work. But there's that perception which is basically if you ask them to do much work, too much work, it will be off‐putting. They have to work their way towards that kind of book, which sometimes means that that kind of book doesn't get a prize. But he [i.e. Michael Symmons Roberts] has won prizes, the Forward Prize and the Whitbread Prize, and was on the shortlist of the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2013, and that's good.
(Burnside 2016, 15–16)
Along with Burnside the jury for the poetry category included Olivia Cole, a journalist and winner of the 2003 Eric Gregory Award, who had published a first collection of poetry, and Daniel Eltringham, whose PhD at Birkbeck, University of London, is on Wordsworth and Prynne, and who has published on R. F. Langley, Peter Riley, and Sean Bonney, and is also the coeditor of the excellent online poetry journal The Literateur. Considering Cole's and Eltringham's expertise in poetry, it is not surprising that Burnside reached a unanimous decision with them in favor of Michael Symmons Roberts's collection. In addition to the prejudice, vexing to Burnside, that a collection of poetry “wasn't as substantial a piece of literary work as a novel” there is the problem presented by the jury's brief itself, which, Burnside points out, requires them “to select well‐written, enjoyable books that they would strongly recommend anyone to read” (Costa Book Awards 2019). This practically rules out the choice of a volume of adventurous and innovative verse. Both these aspects are reflected in the composition of the jury for the Costa Book of the Year. It was chaired by Rose Tremain, the author of 14 novels and five collections of short stories, who taught Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia and was its chancellor. The “three other people in the public eye who love reading” were: Natascha McElhone, British stage, screen, and television actress; Richard Osman, a BBC and Channel 4 presenter, producer, and director; and Sharleen Spiteri, songwriter and lead singer of the Glasgow‐based rock band Texas. The authors from the juries of the other four categories were Matt Cain (First Novel), Gerard Woodward (Novel), Anne de Courcy (Biography), and Emma Kennedy (Children's Book). When one studies the personal websites of the jury members and other sources relating to them, it is, admittedly, almost always difficult to assess whether or not there is a potential interest, let alone expertise, in regard to poetry. However, in order to avoid mere speculation, let us continue considering the personal literary background of each figure from the jury. It can be assumed that Sharleen Spiteri as a songwriter may have a certain perhaps debatable predilection for poetry. Woodward, who is both a poet and a novelist—he has published six collections of poetry, six novels, and two collections of short stories—won an Eric Gregory Award for poets under 30 (1989), and for his first collection of poetry, Householder, the Somerset Maugham Award (1991). As all the other jury members have a personal background in prose and fiction, one can certainly understand Burnside's difficulties, and eventual failure, in persuading his fellow adjudicators to vote for the poetry book.
In the abovementioned interview, Burnside mentions awards that he seems to hold in higher regard than the Costa: the Forward Prizes and the T. S. Eliot Prize. The Forward Prizes were set up in 1992 by William Sieghart, an entrepreneur and publisher, who also founded National Poetry Day in 1994—a day of celebration of verse on the first Thursday in October—and, 1 year later, the Forward Arts Foundation, a charity that administers both poetry projects. Its mission is threefold: “to deepen appreciation of poetry's value; to celebrate excellence in poetry; to increase poetry's audience” (Forward Arts Foundation 2019). For Sieghart, “[p]oetry is a magnificent companion in this busy modern world, often giving us a vocabulary for emotions we cannot express” (Treneman 1997). The Forward Prizes are awarded in three categories: Best Collection, Best First Collection, and Best Single Poem. For the twenty‐fifth anniversary in 2016, the value of the Forward Prize for Best Collection was increased to £15,000, while each of the shortlisted poets was awarded £1,000. The winner of the Best First Collection received £5,000 and the poet of the Best Single Poem could cash a check worth £1,000. Since 2013, the Forward Prizes have been presented live on stage, a special event at the Royal Festival Hall in London's Southbank Centre in late October, after readings from the shortlisted collections. In contrast to the Costa Book Awards, the judging panel includes only poets and poetry editors. The 2016 panel was chaired by Malika Booker, writer and spoken word artist, and included the poets George Szirtes and Liz Berry, the singer/songwriter Tracey Thorn, as well as Don Share, editor of Poetry Magazine. The shortlist of each category consisted of five nominations. The really surprising aspect of the three shortlists was the omission of publications from some established publishers, for example, Faber & Faber and Chatto & Windus (an imprint of Random House). A close consideration of the poets on the three shortlists left me not just surprised but positively—in both senses of the word—puzzled: there was a striking absence, perhaps with the exception of Alice Oswald, of the so‐called “big names.” I could only agree with Malika Booker, chair of the judges, when she asserted, admittedly going a little over the top (which, no doubt, appealed to the press):
In this 25th year of the Forward prizes, I feel we're seeing a complete resurgence and a breaking down of barriers within and around poetry. Just look at the shortlist: there are eleven women and the multiplicity of voices is testimony to the fact that the poetry published here now feels totally global. These collections and works represent the very best of contemporary poetry. Fresh, vibrant and full of new insights and challenging ideas, each demands attention and we're all daunted by the prospect of choosing our winners.
(Bainbridge 2016)
The shortlist of Best Collection was headed by Trinidad‐born Vahni Capildeo (Carcanet Press), who was to receive the prize, and Choman Hardi (Bloodaxe Books)—born in Sulaymaniyah, Kurdistan, she lived in Iraq and Iran before seeking asylum in the UK in 1993. Their poems deal with migration, protest, and polylingualism, some of today's big issues. Alice Oswald (Cape Poetry) and Denise Riley (Picador Poetry) are poets who could not be more different in terms of their publishing careers. Oswald published her first collection, The Thing in the Gap‐Stone Stile, with Oxford University Press in 1996. She received immediate and prestigious recognition, winning the Best First Collection category of the Forward Prizes. In November 1998, Oxford University Press infamously announced the closing down of its poetry list, which meant the loss of their chief avenue of publication to some 50 poets, including D. J. Enright, Sean O'Brien, Craig Raine, and Peter Porter (Glaister 1999). This is the reason why Oswald published her second collection, Dart, with Faber & Faber, for which she received the T. S. Eliot Prize. Oswald stayed with the London publisher until 2011, when she entrusted to them her sixth collection, Memorial—which was shortlisted, again, for the T. S. Eliot Prize. However, Oswald withdrew her collection from the shortlist in December 2011, because she took issue with the fact that the Poetry Book Society, the administrator of the prize, had signed a 3‐year sponsorship deal with Aurum, an investment company