My TS Eliot Prize Reading in the Royal Festival Hall

Here is a recording of my entire reading at the 2010 TS Eliot Prize Readings in the Royal Festival Hall on 23rd January. This time last Sunday, I was nervously making my way to the Southbank and what turned out to be a two-thousand plus audience. Ian McMillan of Radio 3's The Verb introduced us all generously and warmly, welcoming us to that scary stage. I loved his joke about each poet speaking for only eight minutes, but not eight 'poetry' minutes.  



The poems I read from my shortlisted collection What the Water Gave Me: Poems after Frida Kahlo were 'Remembrance of an Open Wound', 'What the Water Gave Me (V)', 'The Little Deer' and 'What the Water Gave Me (VI)'

The Poetry Book Society has recorded all ten of the shortlisted poets' readings and you can listen to them all on one page here. I'm looking forward to hearing them again, including Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney, and Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, the winner of this year's prize, whose poems were read by Daljit Nagra.

There are three more of my poems from What the Water Gave Me, and by each poet from their shortlisted collections, on the Guardian website.