T.S. Eliot Prize for Oswald

January 18, 2006 Dart, a single, book-length poem, was inspired by the river Dart in Devon, where the poet spent three years recording conversations with people who live and work on the river. The book contains a multitude of contemporary, idiomatic voices, interwoven with historic and mythic ones, The Guardian writes.

Oswald, a classicist by training, works as a gardener on the Dartington Estate in Devon. Dart is her second book; her first, The Thing in the Gap-stone Stile, was also nominated for the T.S. Eliot prize in 1997. She told the Poetry Society, organizers of the prize, that Dart intended "to reconnect the local imagination to its environment - in particular, in these years of water shortages and floods, to increase people's awareness of water as a natural resource."

The Poetry Book Society, of which T.S. Eliot was a founder member, has been organizing the prestigious prize for ten years now. Other poets shortlisted this year include Simon Armitage, John Burnside, Paul Farley, David Harsent, Geoffrey Hill, E.A. Markham, Sinead Morrissey, Paul Muldoon and Ruth Padel.

A radio-interview with Oswald can be found on the website of the BBC.