Hadfield wins prestigious poetry prize

Shetland-based Jen Hadfield has won one of poetry’s most prestigious prizes for her second anthology of work, Nigh-No-Place.

The 30-year-old poet picked up the TS Eliot Prize and a cheque for £15,000 at a ceremony in London on Monday evening.

Her work has been inspired by the Shetland landscape, although No-Nigh-Place was also written while she travelled across Canada.

Poet laureate Andrew Motion, chairman of the judges, said: “Nigh-No-Place shows that [Hadfield] is a remarkably original poet near the beginning of what is obviously going to be a distinguished career.”

Previous winners of the prize, which was established in 1993, include Seamus Heaney, Carol Ann Duffy, Don Paterson and Ted Hughes.

* For full story, see this week’s Shetland Times.