Pressing for the prize

The judges of the T S. Eliot poetry prize are in session. The prize is the most prestigious and the most lucrative poetry prize in Britain and this year the competition is comprised of luminaries. In fact, ‘luminaries’ doesn’t do justice to this field of Nobel laureates, contenders for the poet laureateship and other acclaimed originals. The winner will be announced on Sunday.

As light relief from the weighty matters of the times, the Today programme has asked each nominee to read their allotted poems. Here you can find Simon Armitage The English Astronaut and Knowing What We Know Now; Pascale Petit reading The Little Deer and What Water Gave Me; Annie Freud reading The Little Deer and Naked Child Laughing; Derek Walcott reading The Lost Empire and Forty Acres; Fiona Sampson reading At Kamsu and First Theory of Movement; and Seamus Heaney read Uncoupled at the Poetry Prom.