Measuring out my life in coffee spoons...

T S Eliot

Tonight is the announcement of the winner of the T S Eliot Poetry Prize 2012. Just to remind you... here's the shortlist:

• John Burnside Black Cat Bone (Jonathan Cape)
• Carol Ann Duffy The Bees (Picador)
• Leontia Flynn Profit and Loss (Jonathan Cape)
• David Harsent Night (Faber)
• Esther Morgan Grace (Bloodaxe)
• Daljit Nagra Tippoo Sultan's Incredible White-Man-Eating Tiger Toy-Machine!!!  (Faber)
  
• Sean O'Brien November (Picador)
• Bernard O'Donoghue Farmers Cross (Faber)

Chair of judges, Gillian Clarke, has said: 'This most demanding of all poetry prizes bears the name of a great twentieth century poet. A great book must win. The shortlist emerged with some pain but no dispute. Despite sorrow at losing other favourites, we're proud of these books, a library of the best, from which just one must be chosen.'

I'm excited to see who wins. Having read Daljit Nagra's superlative collection again and again since it came out last August, and having been to see him read countless times, I'm rooting for him. But there are some great collections on the shortlist, not least one from our very own Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy. We're off to see Sean O'Brien deliver this year's Sebald Lecture this week too. So good luck to all the shortlisted poets for tonight.