Karen Solie wins prestigious poetry prize

Karen Solie, poet and Reader in Creative Writing at the University of St Andrews, is the winner of the prestigious T.S. Eliot Prize 2025. 

Karen scooped the award for her sixth collection, Wellwater, at a ceremony in London on Monday 19 January. The shortlist of 10 included Isabelle Baafi, Nick Makoha, Sarah Howe and Paul Farley.

This is the third prize for the anthology, following on from the Governor General’s Medal – the biggest Canadian literary prize – and the Forward prize. Karen teaches in the School of English for half the year and spends the rest of her time in Canada.

Prize Chair Michael Hofmann said: “In Karen Solie we have an outstanding winner. The poems of Wellwater come from the whole of an adventurously lived life. They hold the two sentiments, The world is a beautiful place/The world is a terrible place, in perfect equipoise. 

“They offer no happy endings, no salvation in past or future, in epiphany or private happiness. And yet they are anything but grim, with an ironic humour that plays over our increasingly euphemism-hungry culture.”

The shortlist, chosen by Michael Hoffman, Patience Agbabi and Niall Campbell, comprised seasoned poets, two debuts, two second collections, four previously shortlisted poets and a former winner. Poets hail from the UK, Ireland, St Lucia, Canada and the USA, and publishers include both large, long-established and smaller independent presses. 

Karen grew up in southwest Saskatchewan, Canada. She has won the Dorothy Livesay Award, Pat Lowther Award, Trillium Poetry Prize, the Griffin Prize, and was joint winner of the 2025 Forward Prize for Best Collection. She has been shortlisted for the Derek Walcott Prize and the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2019, and is a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow.

Karen receives £25,000 as the winner of the Prize, presented by the T. S. Eliot Foundation. Each shortlisted poet also receives £1,500 in recognition of their achievement in winning a place on the most prestigious shortlist in UK poetry.

You can view videos of Karen’s readings from Wellwater and hear her talking about her work on the T. S. Eliot Prize YouTube channel.