Will Harris (poet)

Last updated

Will Harris
Born1989 (age 34–35)
OccupationPoet
Notable worksRENDANG (2020)
Notable awards Forward Prizes for Poetry

Will Harris (born 1989) is a London-based poet of Chinese Indonesian and British heritage. His debut poetry book RENDANG won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2020, [1] and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize 2021. [2] His poem SAY was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem in 2018. [1] In 2019, Harris received a Poetry Fellowship from the Arts Foundation. [1]

Contents

RENDANG was described by the London Review of Books as "one of the most hotly-anticipated debut poetry collections of 2020", [3] by The Guardian as "a sharp and assured debut collection that meditates on the multiplicity of identity", [4] and by the Financial Times as "poems that brim with soul and playfulness." [5] RENDANG was longlisted for the 2021 Dylan Thomas Prize and shortlisted for the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize, 2021. [6] [7]

Harris's essay Mixed-Race Superman was published in the UK by Peninsula Press and by Melville House in the US. It was described by The New York Times as "a zany, exuberant and highly original meditation on what it means to come of age as a mixed-race person in a predominantly white world" [8] and by The Times Literary Supplement as "meditat[ing] wisely on this potentially awkward yet not exactly uncommon state of in-betweenness". [9]

Harris was mentored on The Complete Works poets of colour mentoring scheme initiated by Bernardine Evaristo to redress representational invisibility. [10]

Work

Awards

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pascale Petit (poet)</span> French-born British poet

Pascale Petit, is a French-born British poet of French, Welsh and Indian heritage. She was born in Paris and grew up in France and Wales. She trained as a sculptor at the Royal College of Art and was a visual artist for the first part of her life. She has travelled widely, particularly in the Peruvian and Venezuelan Amazon and India.

The T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry is a prize for poetry awarded by the T. S. Eliot Foundation. For many years it was awarded by the Eliots' Poetry Book Society (UK) to "the best collection of new verse in English first published in the UK or the Republic of Ireland" in any particular year. The Prize was inaugurated in 1993 in celebration of the Poetry Book Society's 40th birthday and in honour of its founding poet, T. S. Eliot. Since its inception, the prize money was donated by Eliot's widow, Mrs Valerie Eliot and more recently it has been given by the T. S. Eliot Estate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alice Oswald</span> British poet

Alice Priscilla Lyle Oswald is a British poet from Reading, Berkshire. Her work won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2002 and the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2017. In September 2017, she was named as BBC Radio 4's second Poet-in-Residence, succeeding Daljit Nagra. From 1 October 2019 until 30 September 2023, she was the Oxford Professor of Poetry.

Nicholas Laird is a Northern Irish novelist and poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Forward Prizes for Poetry</span> British poetry award(s)

The Forward Prizes for Poetry are major British awards for poetry, presented annually at a public ceremony in London. They were founded in 1992 by William Sieghart with the aim of celebrating excellence in poetry and increasing its audience. The prizes do this by identifying and honouring talent: collections published in the UK and Ireland over the course of the previous year are eligible, as are single poems nominated by journal editors or prize organisers. Each year, works shortlisted for the prizes – plus those highly commended by the judges – are collected in the Forward Book of Poetry.

Ciaran Gerard Carson was a Northern Ireland-born poet and novelist.

Leontia Flynn is a poet and writer from Northern Ireland.

Paul Farley FRSL is a British poet, writer and broadcaster.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Julia Copus</span> British poet, biographer and childrens writer

Julia Copus FRSL is a British poet, biographer and children's writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fiona Sampson</span> British poet and writer

Fiona Ruth Sampson, Born 1963 is a British poet, writer, editor, translator and academic who was the first woman editor of Poetry Review since Muriel Spark. She received a MBE for services to literature in 2017.

Jean Sprackland is an English poet and writer, the author of five collections of poetry and two books of essays about place and nature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caroline Bird</span> British poet, playwright and author (born 1986)

Caroline Bird is a British poet, playwright and author.

Selima Hill is a British poet. She has published twenty poetry collections since 1984. Her 1997 collection, Violet, was shortlisted for the most important British poetry awards: the Forward Poetry Prize, the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Whitbread Poetry Award. She was selected as recipient of the 2022 King's Gold Medal for Poetry.

Fiona Benson is an English poet. Her collections have been shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2014 and 2019. Vertigo and Ghost (2019) won the Forward Prize for Poetry for Best Collection.

Sasha Dugdale FRSL is a British poet, playwright, editor and translator. She has written five poetry collections and is a translator of Russian literature.

Mary Jean Chan is a Hong Kong-Chinese poet, lecturer, editor and critic whose debut poetry collection, Flèche, won the 2019 Costa Book Award in the poetry category. Chan’s second book, Bright Fear, was published by Faber in 2023. In 2023, Chan served as a judge for the Booker Prize.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Falling Awake (poetry collection)</span> 2016 poetry collection by Alice Oswald

Falling Awake is a 2016 poetry collection by English poet Alice Oswald, published by Jonathan Cape. Her seventh book of poetry, it won the 2016 Costa Poetry Award and the 2017 Griffin Poetry Prize.

Martha Sprackland (born 1988) is a British writer.

Stephanie Sy-Quia is a British–American writer. Born in California and now living in London, Sy-Quia attended the King's School, Canterbury then went on to study English at Oxford.

Yara Rodrigues Fowler is a British novelist of Brazilian origin. She was nominated for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year award, and she was also named by the Financial Times as one of “the planet’s 30 most exciting young people”. In 2023, she was named by Granta Magazine in their decennial list of best young British novelists.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Will Harris". Forward Arts Foundation. Retrieved 9 January 2021.
  2. ↑ Flood, Alison (15 October 2020). "TS Eliot prize unveils 'unsettling, captivating' shortlist". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 January 2021.
  3. ↑ "Will Harris and Rachael Allen: RENDANG". LRB. Retrieved 10 January 2021.
  4. ↑ Lee, Joanna (1 February 2020). "The best recent poetry collections". The Guardian. Retrieved 10 January 2021.
  5. ↑ Crawford, Maria (6 March 2020). "Rendang by Will Harris — poems that brim with soul and playfulness". Financial Times. Retrieved 10 January 2021.
  6. ↑ "Dylan Thomas Prize 2021: Longlist Announced". Wales Arts Review. 21 January 2021. Retrieved 29 March 2021.
  7. ↑ Doyle, Martin (15 April 2021). "Irish writers longlisted for Desmond Elliott Prize and RSL Ondaatje Prize". The Irish Times. Retrieved 20 April 2021.
  8. ↑ "Congratulations, Meghan and Harry! (Now Here's What to Read)". The New York Times. 7 May 2019. Retrieved 10 January 2021.
  9. ↑ Caines, Michael (17 August 2018). "Inbetweeners: Stories of being neither one race nor another". TLS. Retrieved 10 January 2021.
  10. ↑ "TCW 1". 28 August 2016. Retrieved 1 June 2021.

Official website

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.