American poet Peter Gizzi has won this year’s £25,000 TS Eliot Prize for his collection Fierce Elegy, described by the chair of judges, Mimi Khalvati as “infinitely sad, yet resolute, and so alive in body and spirit”.

The collection draws on the Michigan-born poet’s experience of losing his brother, who was also a poet. With him Gizzi founded the former US literary magazine oblék. Michael died in 2010, and Gizzi’s other brother, Tom, in 2018. Gizzi himself was diagnosed with a rare blood disease in 2021.

“Written in the aftermath of grief, Peter Gizzi’s Fierce Elegy brings us poems that revel in minutiae but also brave the large questions in a lyric sequence of transcendental beauty,” the TS Eliot judging panel said. It was made up of Khalvati, and former TS Eliot prize winners Anthony Joseph and Hannah Sullivan.

At the TS Eliot prize readings at the Royal Festival Hall on Sunday night, compere Ian McMillan added his praise, describing Gizzi’s poetry as “profound and powerful”, adding that he was “a master of the short line”.

The Poetry Book Society said: "In March 2021, Peter Gizzi was diagnosed with a very rare blood disease. This book is what followed: composed slowly and painstakingly, with an eye as much to his own impending mortality as to a decade of losses of friends and family, yet suffused, beautifully, with music and light. The book’s broad subject is elegy, which Gizzi calls 'a mode that can transform a broken heart in a fierce world into a fierce heart in a broken world'. 

"Here, ferocity is reimagined as vulnerability, bravery and discovery. Joy and sorrow make a complex ecosystem. As we read, it is as if we have left our bodies and are looking down on them from above. In their quest for a lyric reality, these poems remind us that elegy is lament, but also a work of openness, and a work of love."

The prize was awarded at the Wallace Collection in London on Monday night. Gizzi is the author of numerous collections including Now It’s Dark (2020), Archeophonics, a finalist for the National Book Award (2016) and Threshold Songs (2011). He lives in Holyoke, Massachusetts.

PIctures of the shortlisted poets at the TS Eliot prize readings 

Background: The shortlisted poets