The Poetry Society

The Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry
Winner: Lavinia Greenlaw for Audio Obscura

From L ot R: Michael Symmons Roberts, Sarah Maguire, Carol Ann Duffy, Lavinia Greenlaw, Edmund de Waal.

Judges Edmund de Waal, Sarah Maguire and Michael Symmons Roberts have presented the 2011 Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry to Lavinia Greenlaw for her outstanding sound work Audio Obscura.

Taking place at Manchester’s Piccadilly station in July 2011 and at London’s St Pancras International station in September / October 2011, Audio Obscura is a sound work in which the listener enters interior lives and discovers, somewhere between what is heard and what is seen, what cannot be said. Audio Obscura was commissioned and produced by Artangel and Manchester International Festival, and Lavinia collaborated with sound designer Tim Barker to produce the work.

The judges said: “Audio Obscura was a groundbreaking work that fully captured the spirit of the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. The judges felt this was a particularly outstanding year with six stellar entries on the shortlist”.

Greenlaw’s poetry includes Minsk and The Casual Perfect. She has also published novels and the non-fiction The Importance of Music to Girls and Questions of Travel: William Morris in Iceland. She has held residencies at the Science Museum and the Royal Society of Medicine, and is Professor of Creative Writing at UEA. Her exploration of perception has led to radio programmes about landscape and light.

Further Information

The Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry is awarded annually to recognise excellence in poetry. It is one of the only awards to acknowledge the wide range of collaborative work being produced by poets - not just in books, but beyond.

Lavinia Greenlaw was presented with her prize of £5,000 by Carol Ann Duffy at an award ceremony at the Savile Club on Wednesday 28 March 2012, alongside the winner of the National Poetry Competition. You can watch a trailer for Audio Obscura online.

The judges selected Lavinia from a shortlist of six, which otherwise included: Simon Armitage for Black Roses: The Killing of Sophie Lancaster, Julia Copus for Ghost Lines, Robert Crawford for Simonides, Andrew Motion for Laurels and Donkeys and Christopher Reid for Airs and Ditties of No Man’s Land. The shortlist was selected earlier in the year from recommendations made by Poetry Society and Poetry Book Society members.

For more information about previous winners Alice Oswald and Kaite O'Reilly see our history section.

About the Award

In 2011, for the third year, members of the Poetry Society and Poetry Book Society were invited to recommend a living UK poet, working in any form, who has made the most exciting contribution to poetry. The £5,000 prize is donated by Carol Ann Duffy, funded from the annual honorarium the Poet Laureate traditionally receives from HM The Queen. The Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry seeks to recognise excellence in poetry, highlighting outstanding contributions made by poets to our cultural life.

“In order to thrive, poetry must always be open to the world it inhabits. This means that it’s vital for poets to engage with other art forms. A poet can learn as much about their craft from closely examining the work of other artists as they can from poetry itself.”
Sarah Maguire, judge of The Ted Hughes Award 2011