Nick Makoha

Nick Makoha on team to judge T.S. Eliot Prize 2019.

Nick Makoha is on the judging panel for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2019 announced on April 9, 2019.

T.S. Eliot, full name Thomas Stearns Eliot, was one of the twentieth century’s major poets. Some of his poetry collections were Prufrock and Other Observations (1917), Ara Vos Prec (London) and Poems: 1920 (New York). The United States born poet, who passed away in 1965, was also an essayist, publisher, playwright, and literary and social critic.

In 1993, the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry was inaugurated to celebrate the UK Poetry Book Society’s 40th birthday and honour its founding poet. Described as ‘the prize most poets want to win’ (Sir Andrew Motion, former Poet Laureate) and ‘the world’s top poetry award’ (Independent), it is awarded annually to the author of the best new collection of poetry published in the UK and Ireland.

The prize is worth £25,000 to the winner and the ten shortlisted poets each receive £1,500. Previous winners include Derek Walcott (2010), John Burnside (2011), Sharon Olds (2012), Sinéad Morrissey (2013), David Harsent (2014) Sarah Howe (2015), Jacob Polley (2016), Ocean Vuong (2017), and Hannah Sullivan (2018).

The process for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2019 is upon us with the team announcing the judges for this year’s edition. The chair for the prize is John Burnside a Scottish poet who is one of only two poets to have won both the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Poetry Prize for the same book. The other judges are Sarah Howe and Nick Makoha.

Ugandan born Nick Makoha has lived in Kenya, Saudi Arabia and currently resides in London. The Brunel University African Poetry Prize 2015 winner has toured the UK with his solo show My Father & Other Superheroes as well as represented Uganda at Poetry Parnassus as part of the Cultural Olympiad held in London. His poetry collection which launched in Kampala in 2017 is Kingdom of Gravity.

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