Shetland-based poet Jen Hadfield has won the highly prestigious TS Eliot Prize For Poetry (2008) for her second collection ‘Nigh-No-Place’ (Bloodaxe). The award of £15’000 has been made every year since 1993, and previous winners have included such luminaries as Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon and Carol Ann Duffy.

Judges for this year’s competition included Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, who said of Jen’s award:

"We are absolutely delighted that Jen Hadfield has won this year's T S Eliot Prize. Nigh-No-Place shows that she is a remarkably original poet near the beginning of what is obviously going to be a distinguished career."

Jen Hadfield was born in Cheshire, England, in 1978, but she will be well-known to many writers in the Highlands and Islands. Jen was originally a writer in residence in Shetland - appointed by Shetland Arts Trust as part of their developed programme of writing development - who stayed on and made her home on the island (not an unusual phenomena for Shetland!), and has since made a big contribution to the sustained development of Shetland’s large community of writers, as well as being an active participant in local writers groups.

Jen is also a key part of HI~Arts’ own writing development team and commenting on Jen’s award, HI~Arts writing Development Coordinator, Peter Urpeth said:

“This award is very richly deserved and comes as little surprise to those of us who know Jen and her work. Her writing is highly original, displaying a real sense of heightened awareness and engagement with the world around her, and offering us insight, light and play in language. But apart from her originality with words, it is impossible not to be struck by Jen’s sure sense of the purpose and value of poetry.”

Jen Hadfield’s first collection of poems ‘Almanacs’ (Bloodaxe, 2005), won an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors, which enabled her to begin work on ‘Nigh-No-Place’ in Canada. Jen recently received a Dewar Award (nominated by Shetland Arts) to produce a solo exhibition of Shetland ex-votos in the style of sacred Mexican folk art, including rubrics of very short fiction.

Donald Anderson, Shetland Arts Literature Development Officer said:

“Winning the prize for her second collection is an amazing achievement for Jen, and also that it is refreshing that the prize should be won by somebody who has chosen to live and work in Shetland. Jen has made a huge contribution to literature development in Shetland and I am sure that I will not be alone in being very proud and delighted by Jen winning the prize.”

Jen Hadfield's website can be viewed at  www.jenhadfield.co.uk.

Read Peter Urpeth's,  Writing Development Coordinator of HI~Arts, blog on Shetland and the Value of Poetry.