Precious and Impossible: Selected Poems
(Bloomsbury) Published Sept 26 2024
Sonnets for Albert wins the 2023 OCM Bocas prize for Caribbean Poetry
Trinidad-born, UK-based Anthony Joseph’s Sonnets for Albert — recently named the 2022 winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize — “is at once a tender and beautifully rendered eulogy for the poet’s father, and a triumph of technical formality,” according to the judges. “The collection moves with the jaunty carriage of the father it honours, marrying the rigid scaffolding of the form with the supple musicality of Trinidadian Creole…. Joseph’s mastery is what accomplishes this effect with a grace that recalls that ‘we shall all be rooted in this well of hours, eventually.’' https://www.bocaslitfest.com/awards/ocm
Winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry 2022
Chair of the judges Jean Sprackland said:
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"Each of the ten books on this year’s shortlist spoke powerfully to us in its own distinctive voice. From this strong field our choice is Anthony Joseph’s Sonnets for Albert, a luminous collection which celebrates humanity in all its contradictions and breathes new life into this enduring form."
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Following a record submission of 201 poetry collections from British and Irish publishers, Judges Jean Sprackland (Chair), Hannah Lowe and Roger Robinson chose the winner from a shortlist of ten books. The eclectic shortlist comprised seasoned poets, including one previous winner, and five debut collections. In our interview with him, Anthony Joseph said of Sonnets for Albert: ‘At its heart the book is really about loss and love, I think love is the main theme – the capacity to love, the way we can love unconditionally where a person’s humanity, their substance, is so strong it displaces their questionable aspects. My father wasn’t great as a dad, but I loved him, was fascinated by him. Readers have asked how, or why I could write a book about someone who was not a good father to me. But that’s the point. I needed to write this all down to make sense of him and the impact of his absences on me.’
To read the interview with Anthony in full and to find videos, reviews and Readers’ Notes about Anthony’s collection, visit the shortlist page of our website
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Anthony Joseph photo © Adrian Pope / T. S. Eliot Prize.