Jen Hadfield Wins the TS Eliot Prize

Warm congratulations from the Magma team go to Jen Hadfield on winning the TS Eliot Prize for Poetry for her second collection, Nigh-No-Place. As might be expected, given the high regard for this prize, she won it against very tough competition.

I and my Magma colleagues are particularly pleased for her after publishing and writing about her poetry for a long time. In 2003, as editor of Magma 25, I was so taken with the originality of her work and in particular her naturalistic integration of both the human and natural worlds that I included four of her poems, including Southport air show. Then Laurie Smith chose her as the Showcase poet in Magma 28. We reviewed her first collection Almanacs in Magma 32, and Nigh-No-Place in Magma 41.

She may not be “near the beginning of … [her] career” to us, to borrow the words of Andrew Motion, chair of the judges; but long may she continue to give to her readers her “remarkably original” voice.