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T S Eliot Prize 10 winner

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The winner of the 2010 T S Eliot Prize for Poetry

The winner of the 2010 T S Eliot Prize for Poetry

Last night at a glittering award ceremony in the elegant Courtyard of the Wallace Collection in London the Poetry Book SocietySpecialist book club founded by T S Eliot in 1953, which aims to offer the best new poetry published in the UK and Ireland. Members buy at 25% discount. The PBS has a handsome new website at  www.poetrybooks.co.uk announced the winner for 'the world's top poetry award' (the Independent).

Judges Anne Stevenson (Chair), Bernardine Evaristo and Michael Symmons Roberts chose

White Egrets by Derek Walcott, published by Faber

as the winner.

The shortlist consisted of the following 10 collections from the 123 new books published in 2010 submitted by UK and Irish publishers:

Seeing Stars by Simon Armitage
The Mirabelles by Annie Freud
You by John Haynes
Human Chain by Seamus Heaney
What the Water Gave Me by Pascale Petit
The Wrecking Light
by Robin Robertson
Rough Music by Fiona Sampson
Phantom Noise by Brian Turner
White Egrets by Derek Walcott
New Light for the Old Dark by Sam Willetts

Anne Stevenson said:

"This year's exceptionally strong and varied shortlist made it difficult to choose the winner, but the judges felt that Derek Walcott's White Egrets was a moving, risk-taking and technically flawless book by a great poet."

For more information on the Poetry Book Society site.