The Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival (BCLF) team announced today that St. Lucian-born Catherine-Esther Cowie is now on the shortlist for the 2025 T. S. Eliot Prize for her debut collection, Heirloom (Carcanet Press, 2025). The Shortlist Readings will take place on Sunday, January 18, 2026, at 7:00pm at the Southbank Centre, in London, followed by the Award Ceremony on Monday, January 19, 2026. Here is the announcement by BCLF.
We’re thrilled to celebrate Catherine-Esther Cowie, whose debut collection, Heirloom, has been shortlisted for the 2025 T. S. Eliot Prize, one of the most prestigious poetry awards in the world.
Inaugurated by the Poetry Book Society in 1993, the T. S. Eliot Prize honours the best new poetry collection published in the UK or Ireland each year. The 2025 shortlist was selected by a distinguished panel of poets, Michael Hofmann, Patience Agbabi, and Niall Campbell, from among 177 collections submitted by 64 publishers.
This year’s shortlist features ten outstanding poets, including two debuts, two sophomore collections, four returning nominees, and one former winner.
Born in St. Lucia to a Tobagonian father and St. Lucian mother, Catherine-Esther Cowie migrated with her family to Canada and later to the United States. Her work has appeared in PN Review, Prairie Schooner, West Branch Journal, The Common, SWWIM, Rhino Poetry, and more. She is a Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop fellow, and her debut poetry collection Heirloom (Carcanet Press) is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and also shortlisted for the Forward Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection.
We were honored to host Catherine-Esther earlier this year during our Poetry Pop-Up at the Brooklyn Museum’s First Saturday Series, where she shared work from Heirloom with our BCLF community. [. . .]
To view the full shortlist, see https://tseliot.com/prize/t-s-eliot-prize-2025-shortlist-great-range-suggestiveness-and-power/
Also see https://tseliot.com/prize/person/catherine-esther-cowie/ and https://www.bklyncbeanlitfest.org/