The Mookse and the Gripes discussion
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T.S. Eliot Prize
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A great day for the shortbookist community The TS Eliot Prize longlist out today
https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...
Wonderfully two of the books are technically ineligible as they were too short per the rules but the judges picked them anyway.
This year, two collections have made the shortlist despite breaking the rule that collections must be at least 48 pages long. Katie Farris’s Standing in the Forest of Being Alive and Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin’s The Map of the World were submitted by publishers in error, but the judges declined to exclude them. “Both are fully achieved poetry collections that merit their inclusion on the shortlist,” said the judges.
The offending rule “A ‘book’ shall be defined as having at least 48 pages.” will hopefully be replaced by “A ‘book’ shall be defined as having at most 200 pages.”
My apologies if this was discussed and I missed it. I was investigating new books and happened to sample the winner of this year's prize, which immediately prompted me to buy what I sampled. I'll be reading and rereading this for the rest of the year and probably promoting it here as well. Although the genre is poetry, I would say that description is deceiving since Taylor incorporates drama, essay, memoir elements into a whole political narrative that reads like an experimental novel. I think some of you will like it. Joelle Taylor is also a master of performance so I have linked a couple of short clips from her readings and Guardian and Independent coverage. Trigger warnings: political, grief, LGBTQ, abuse
https://youtu.be/bxmp0eUl2xU
https://youtu.be/ZXtLqCXSHLI
https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/...