Many of the poems are hugely affecting, whether evoked in a traditional format, short paragraphs of prose or a few lines. Some would imagine that such poems are easy to do, but the skill and graft shine through Robinson’s words. Memory and belonging: the poet speaks of a ‘grandmother’ in the past tense and in the same breath speaks of ‘Paradise’, which suggests that both are in the speaker’s memory and are interwoven.

The notion of the paradise evokes sensory memories of a distant land, possibly Robinson’s own home country, Trinidad, with references to ‘white sand’, ‘green hills’ and ‘fresh fish’. The poem ends on a cautiously optimistic note, the paradise offering ‘fresh hope’ and the ‘morning’ connoting a new start. A Portable Paradise Context

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Your poem Beware in A Portable Paradise feels horribly resonant after George Floyd’s murder (“When police place knees/at your throat, you may not live/to tell of choking”). The poem is part of a much longer, complex expansive form but also functions as a self-contained stand-alone entry. The use of caesura and enjambment provides its loose, conversational feel and the starting conjunction ‘And’ draws us as readers into the speaker’s confidence. Themes He said the judges had made passionate cases for various books for months, but Robinson was the unanimous choice in their final meeting on Monday. His belief in mentoring was rooted in his own experience. “I have had many mentors and one of them was [Booker prize-winner and poet] Bernardine Evaristo , who said: ‘You’ve got talent but you need to hone your craft.’” By his mid 20s he knew that he wanted to be an artist, and that if he was going to succeed he would have to live frugally. “My mentors taught me that if you control your economics you can control your output.” I was told if you get less than 36 rejections don’t say it’s not working. On about my 37th attempt I got published

Throughout this selection of recordings, Robinson’s ethereal imagery, which gives the reader the impression of having one foot in this life and one in another realm, is frequently borne out in his engagement with form. ‘Day Moon’, a sonnet, uses this traditional set form to bend the often-deafening whiteness of the contemporary British nature poem, and many of these pieces comply with the parameters of the Japanese haibun, as short descriptions of a place, person or object, or else an account of the speaker’s journey. Ultimately, the poems in A Portable Paradise – whether read or listened to – are incantatory, and, like prayers, they generate hope, ‘the fresh hope of morning’ (‘A Portable Paradise’). I like an expansive poetic form. I read widely and look at global forms. Toni Morrison, Gabriel García Márquez, José Saramago are influences. I admire Linton Kwesi Johnson. Derek Walcott for his use of English form and Caribbean content. I also access so much good storytelling online; Netflix shows like Top Boy are amazing.The poet John Burnside, chair of the judges, praised A Portable Paradise for “finding in the bitterness of everyday experience continuing evidence of ‘sweet, sweet life’.” Identity: the speaker has a clear and deeply personal connection to his idea of paradise, which has become part of his identity. These are finely crafted poems, that reveal Roger Robinson’s capacity to tell involving stories and capture the essence of a character in a few words, to move the emotions with the force of verbal expression, and engage our thoughts, as in the sequence of poems that reflect on just what paradise might be. A Portable Paradise is a feast to be carried by lovers of poetry wherever they go. Listen to Ian McMillan's radio programme about this year's T.S. Eliot Prize awards at the BBC (available from Friday 17 January 2020).

Petit, who conducted meetings with her fellow judges Evie Wyld and Peter Frankopan on Zoom, added: “Every poem surprises with its imagery, emotional intensity and lyric power, whether dealing with Grenfell, Windrush or a son’s difficult birth, which is also a tribute to a Jamaican nurse,” said Petit, referring to Robinson’s poem Grace, named after the nurse who cradled his son in neonatal intensive care.Robinson was new to me before reading this collection. But from the first poem, ‘The Missing’, written for those lost in the Grenfell fire, I was smitten by his enormous and generous talent. Tuama: I think this poem invites people who have lived under a sustained threat to imagine what has sustained them through living through that threat and whose voices in their ancestors and their matriarchs have given them ways to hold onto something that keeps them alive, as well as then maintain the focus to know that it isn’t your fault, that there is something out to steal, there is a “they” out to steal what’s going on; and from that, then, to keep that in your mind, too — to be aware that you’re in the struggle. And I think, other people who haven’t lived under sustained torture and sustained stealing, and people who have lived in systems that have benefited them, rather than bereaved them, I think the invitation here is to pay attention to, when have I been the person who, whether I admit it or not, has been out to steal the paradises that keep people alive? The book is a long reflection on paradise. And the word is such an interesting word, “paradise.” It comes into Latin and Greek, and English, through an early Iranian language, Avestan, which is the language of the scriptures, of Zoroastrianism. And it means “an enclosed garden”. And so, I suppose often, in English, you think of paradise, speaking of the garden of paradise, Eden. And John Milton’s epic poem called Paradise Lost is about Adam and Eve losing, or being expelled from, Eden. Or people might think about paradise as heaven, as well.

I first came across Roger Robinson in the middle of the pandemic, after he won the TS Eliot prize for his new collection of poems A Portable Paradise.I see the word “concealed” there, and I think of headlines where, in London, there might be references to young people of color carrying a concealed weapon. And I think he is deliberately taking this idea of concealed and talking about what do you conceal because other people will deny it and threaten you, other powers will, and people who say that they’re the law-keepers and threaten you with being perceived as the law-breaker. And I think, ultimately, he’s saying that your paradise is a quality of life; but, deeper than that, it’s your life. I’ve recently read Leviathan, [Philip Hoare’s book] about an obsession with whales; it’s amazing. Mouth Full of Blood by Toni Morrison. Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House is next. In a recent interview with the Guardian, the British-Trinidadian Roger Robinson conjectured that his poetry‘came out of [his mother’s] storytelling at the dinner table’. The truth of this resounds through A Portable Paradise, the winner of the 2019 T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize. Robinson’s voice is remarkable for its attentiveness to the daily subtleties of life – though his collection may seem ambitious in covering the Grenfell Tower disaster, the theorist Stuart Hall, Windrush, Bob Marley, the Brixton riots and the premature birth of his own son, Robinson displays a telescopic power of observation which cuts through the detritus that complex political subjects can accumulate. What he presents is a faithful vision of distinct realities, tracing the Grenfell disaster to‘Muhammed’s fridge’, drawing powerful irony from a slave’s‘cotton shirt’, dissecting mundanities – there is a line in the bitter Citizen Iwhich reads‘Every second street name is a shout out to my captors’. Robinson gets you thinking about those questions deeply. The only paradise-free section looks at the Windrush Scandal as a paradise lost as those wrongs can never be put right. Robinson’s collection beat titles including Elif Shafak’s Booker-shortlisted novel 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World, and Robert Macfarlane’s exploration of the world beneath our feet, Underland.