Celebrated poet, Gboyega Odubanjo’s poetry collection, Adam, has earned posthumous recognition on the shortlist of the T.S Eliot Prize for 2024.
Haunted by the discovery of the remains of a young Black boy in the River Thames in London, 2001, Gboyega Odubanjo’s Adam builds from the Genesis myth and from Yoruba culture to examine with an unflinching eye the disappearance of a child and its implication for all Black lives, and for the society in which we live.
Gboyega was one of 10 poets to make the shortlist. Other poets include, in no particular order:
- Hannah Copley – Lapwing
- Gustav Parker Hibbett – High Jump as Icarus Story
- Rachel Mann – Eleanor Among the Saints
- Carl Phillips – Scattered Snows, to the North
- Katrina Porteous – Rhizodont.
- Raymond Antrobus – Signs, Music
- Helen Farish – The Penny Dropping
- Karen McCarthy Woolf – Top Doll
- Peter Gizzi – Fierce Elegy
The Prize is awarded annually to the author of the best new collection of poetry published in the UK and Ireland.
It is firmly established as the most valuable and prestigious prize in the UK for a new collection of poetry. It is distinctive among poetry prizes in being judged by a panel of established poets. In 2017, to mark the 25th anniversary of the Prize, the T. S. Eliot Estate increased the value of the Prize. The winner now receives £25,000 and the ten shortlisted poets each receive £1,500.
In 2016 the charity the Poetry Book Society closed down, transferring the Poetry Book Society, its membership and book club to Inpress Ltd. The T. S. Eliot Prize was taken over by the T. S. Eliot Foundation, which now runs and supports it.
All ten of these books will be reviewed by the Young Critics, a collaborative project between Young Poets Network and the T. S. Eliot Prize.
The T. S. Eliot Prize 2024 Shortlist Readings will take place on Sunday 12 January 2025 at 7pm in the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall as part of its literature programme.
The winner of the 2024 Prize will be announced at the Award Ceremony on Monday 13 January 2025.
For more information on the Prize, visit the T. S. Eliot Prize website.
Bongiwe T. Maphosa
Bongiwe Maphosa is a writer whose fiction and poetry offers fresh, imaginative perspectives on the human condition. Her work has been published in prominent literary spaces, including Isele Magazine, Akowdee Magazine, the AVBOB Poetry Anthology, Journal of African Youth in Literature (JAY Lit), and more. She was also nominated for the 2025 Best of the Net Anthology. Bongiwe is one of six writers selected for the inaugural Caine Prize Online Editing program and serves as a content writer, peer reviewer, and tier three awards judge for JAYLit. Bridging inner reflection with speculative worlds, she continues to carve out a distinctive voice within contemporary African literature for a growing global audience.
