The shortlist for this year’s TS Eliot prize was revealed at Cheltenham Literature Festival on Thursday 14 October 2021 – and a Gloucestershire poet has made the list.
Daniel Sluman’s Single Window, which was published on Thursday 30 September 2021, made the shortlist of just 10 poetry collections up for the £25,000 award.
Single Window is described as a ‘hybrid memoir of poetry and images’ which depicts a year in the life of Daniel – an amputee with chronic pain – and his wife, Emily, who lives with Crohn’s Disease and Fibromyalgia.
The collection of poetry and photographs encompasses the realities of life as a disabled couple; the daily struggles and suffering of living with a disability; isolation from society; the visceral nature of pain; but also hope, tenderness and unconditional love.
The Guardian said there was ‘a luminosity to this world that is otherwise suffused with suffering’ in its review of Single Window.
Daniel, who was born in Gloucestershire and studied both his BA in English and his MA at the University of Gloucestershire, has had three poetry collections published so far – with Single Window available through Nine Arches Press.
The winner of the TS Eliot prize will be announced in January 2022.
