Ted Hughes Award

The Ted Hughes Award was an annual literary prize given to a living UK poet for new work in poetry. It was awarded each spring in recognition of a work from the previous year. It was a project which ran alongside Carol Ann Duffy's tenure as Poet Laureate, which ended when Duffy finished her 10 years as Poet Laureate in 2019^[1]

Background

The award was established in 2009 with the permission of Carol Hughes in honour of British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes.^[2] Annually the members of the Poetry Society and Poetry Book Society recommended a living UK poet who had completed the newest and most innovative work that year, "highlighting outstanding contributions made by poets to our cultural life." The award sought to celebrate new work that might have fallen beyond the conventional realms of poetry, embracing mediums such as music, dance and theatre. ^[3] The £5,000 prize funded from the annual honorarium that Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy receives as Laureate from The Queen.^[4][5]

Winners

Ted Hughes Award winners^[6]

Year	Judges	Author	Title	Result	Ref.
2009	Imtiaz Dharker Tim Supple Jo Shapcott	Alice Oswald with etchings by Jessica Greenman	Weeds and Wildflowers	Winner	[3][7]
		Chris Agee	Next To Nothing	Shortlist
		Dannie Abse	New Selected Poems 1949-2009: Anniversary Collection	Shortlist
		John Glenday	Grain	Shortlist
		Paul Farley	Field Recordings: BBC Poems (1998-2008)	Shortlist
		Jackie Kay	The Maw Broon Monologues	Shortlist	[7]
		Andrew Motion	The Cinder Path	Shortlist	[7]
2010	Gillian Clarke Stephen Raw Jeanette Winterson	Kaite O'Reilly	The Persians[a]	Winner	[8][9]
		Martin Figura	Whistle	Shortlist	[9]
		Christopher Reid	Song of Lunch[b]	Shortlist	[9]
		David Swann with wood-cuts by Clare Dunne	The Privilege of Rain[c]	Shortlist	[9]
		Katharine Towers	The Floating Man	Shortlist	[9]
2011	Edmund de Waal Sarah Maguire Michael Symmons Roberts	Lavinia Greenlaw	Audio Obscura	Winner	[10][11]
		Simon Armitage	Black Roses: The Killing of Sophie Lancaster	Shortlist	[11]
		Julia Copus	Ghost Lines	Shortlist	[11]
		Robert Crawford	Simonides	Shortlist	[11]
		Andrew Motion	Laurels and Donkeys	Shortlist	[11]
		Christopher Reid	Airs and Ditties of No Man’s Land	Shortlist	[11]
2012	Cornelia Parker Ian Duhig Maura Dooley	Kae Tempest	Brand New Ancients	Winner	[12][13][14]
		Colette Bryce	Ballasting the Ark	Shortlist	[15]
		Roy Fisher	Locklines	Shortlist	[15]
		Ruth Padel	The Mara Crossing	Shortlist	[15]
		Mario Petrucci	Tales from the Bridge	Shortlist	[15]
		Denise Riley	A Part Song	Shortlist	[15]
		Tamar Yoseloff	Formerly	Shortlist	[15]
2013	Sean Borodale Eileen Cooper Denise Riley	Maggie Sawkins	Zones of Avoidance[d]	Winner	[16]
		Steve Ely	Oswald’s Book of Hours	Shortlist	[16]
		Chris McCabe	Pharmapoetica	Shortlist	[16]
		Hannah Silva	Total Man	Shortlist	[16]
		Zoë Skoulding	The Museum of Disappearing Sounds	Shortlist	[16]
2014	Julia Copus Kei Miller Grayson Perry	Sir Andrew Motion	Coming Home[e]	Winner	[17][18]
		Patience Agbabi	Telling Tales	Shortlist	[19]
		Imtiaz Dharker	Over the Moon	Shortlist	[19]
		Carrie Etter	Imagined Sons	Shortlist	[19]
		Alice Oswald	Tithonus	Shortlist	[19]
2015	Jackie Kay Andrew McMillan Ali Smith	David Morley	The Invisible Gift: Selected Poems	Winner	[20]
		Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi and Sarah Maguire	He Tells Tales of Meroe	Shortlist
		Chris Beckett	Sketches from the Poem Road	Shortlist
		Elizabeth Burns	Clay	Shortlist
		Kate Clanchy	We Are Writing a Poem about Home	Shortlist
		Carole Satyamurti	Mahabharata: A Modern Retelling	Shortlist
2016	Jo Bell Bernard O'Donoghue Kathryn Williams	Hollie McNish	Nobody Told Me	Winner	[21][22]
		Will Eaves	The Inevitable Gift Shop	Shortlist	[23]
		Salena Godden	LIVEwire	Shortlist	[23]
		Melissa Lee-Houghton	Sunshine	Shortlist	[23]
		Harry Man	Finders Keepers	Shortlist	[23]
		Hollie McNish	Nobody Told Me	Shortlist	[23]
		Caroline Smith	The Immigration Handbook	Shortlist	[23]
2017	Gillian Allnutt Sally Beamish Lemn Sissay	Jay Bernard	Surge: Side A	Winner	[24][25][26]
		Caroline Bird	In These Days of Prohibition	Shortlist
		Kayo Chingonyi	Chingonyi for Kumukanda	Shortlist
		Inua Ellams	#Afterhours	Shortlist
		Matthew Francis	The Mabinogi	Shortlist
		Antony Owen	The Nagasaki Elder	Shortlist
		Greta Stoddart	Who’s There?	Shortlist
2018	Judges: Clare Shaw Linton Kwesi Johnson Rev. Canon Mark Oakley	Raymond Antrobus	The Perseverance	Winner	[27]
		Tishani Doshi	Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods	Shortlist
		Roy McFarlane	The Healing Next Time	Shortlist
		Susan Richardson	Words the Turtle Taught Me	Shortlist
		Hannah Sullivan	Three Poems	Shortlist

Notes

1. The Persians is a site specific retelling of Aeschylus’ play by the same name first produced in 472 BCE.
2. For Song of Lunch, Reid worked with director Niall MacCormick to adapt his narrative poem The Song of Lunch into a 50-minute BBC2 film.
3. The Privilege of Rain is a collection compiled following a year as Writer in Residence at HM Prison Nottingham.
4. Zones of Avoidance is a live production featuring multimedia written and performed by Sawkins and directed by Mark Hewitt
5. The Coming Home radio programme featured poetry by Motion based on recordings he made of British soldiers returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.