This week on My Poetic Side we look at the winner of this year’s TS Eliot Prize for poetry, the reasons why Robert Burns is being side-lined, and the grant to preserve Lord Byron’s statue.
TS Eliot Poetry Prize 2025
Peter Gizzi has been announced as the winner of this year’s TS Eliot prize for poetry with his book Fierce Elegy, which the judges have described as “Transcendental beauty”. The collection, which was informed by grief for his two brothers, draws on the poet’s raw emotions and painful experiences to “brave large questions”.
Michigan-born Gizzi also won the Massachusetts book award in September with Fierce Elegy. He was chosen as the winner of the poetry prize – which carries a £25,000 prize – over the nine other poets who were shortlisted. These include poets like Helen Farish and “The Penny Dropping” and Raymond Antrobus, a previous winner, and “Signs, Music”.
Together with his brother Michael, who was also a poet, Gizzi founded oblék, the former US literary magazine. Michael died in 2010, and Tom, the poet’s other brother, died in 2018. Gizzi was diagnosed with a rare form of blood disease in 2021.
Gizzi has written several other collections of poetry, one of which was a finalist in the National Book Awards. He has always been interested in elegies, finding them a way of exploring awareness of periodicity and looking at the world and life.
Among the shortlisted poets for the prize was Gboyega Obubanjo, who died in August 2023 at the age of 27. The prize money that he would have received will be donated to a foundation set up in his name by his family to support Black writers on a low income.
Robert Burns Side-lined in Diversity Row
The famous poet Robert Burns, often referred to as the National poet of Scotland, has been dropped from the school curriculum in Scotland. This is part of a drive for diversity in a move critics are calling “abandonment”.
The Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) has decided to scrap Burns’ writing as one of the main topics in secondary schools. They have decided instead to consign it to a wider anthology of national poetry that is taught as part of the course.
The move comes as part of a bid to boost diversity in the literature that is being taught and to reposition the poet. However, it has been met with considerable backlash from those who feel that he “did more than any writer in history to save our culture and tongue” and should not be relegated to the side-lines.
In defending their stance, the SQA havs pointed out that in recent years Burns’ work has taken a huge dip in popularity and that the change has been made following a consultation of teachers, literary experts, and pupils. A range of more diverse work including novels written by women, those with an LGBQT background and writers of colour will take his place.
Society Receives £230, 280 to Save Statue of Poet
The Byron Society has been awarded a grant of £230, 280 to rescue a Grade II listed a statue of Lord Byron that currently sits on a traffic island in Westminster Park Lane. The money will help them to move the statue to a more accessible spot near to Hyde Park where it will once again become accessible to the public. They are also hoping to use some of the money to produce digital resources aimed at GCSE and A Level students as well as creating a Byron walking tour of London.
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