John Burnside, former CCAT* student and Anglia Ruskin University Hon D.Litt, was named winner of this year's T S Eliot Prize for Poetry for his collection 'Black Cat Bone' - just three months on from winning the Forward Prize for the same work. John is only the second poet to have achieved this double accolade for the same book, the first being Sean O'Brien in 2007.

The T S Eliot Prize for Poetry was initiated in 1993 by the Poetry Book Society to celebrate its 40th birthday, and was described by Sir Andrew Motion (then Poet Laureate) as 'the prize most poets want to win'. Each year, a prize of £15,000 is donated by Valerie Eliot (T S Eliot's widow) and presented to the poet considered, by a panel of their peers, to have published the best new collection of poetry in the UK or Ireland. The short-list this year included Sean O'Brien and Carol Ann Duffy.

John's Forward Prize win in October 2011 represented a great personal accomplishment for him. He had already been short-listed on 3 previous occasions and was up against a field considered by many to be the strongest since the prize began in 1991.


*Cambridgeshire College of Arts and Technology, a previous manifestation of Anglia Ruskin from 1960-1989

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