Poet’s sixth collection explores the destruction of the natural world, with a perspective shaped by her upbringing in rural Canada
The Canadian poet Karen Solie has won the 2025 TS Eliot poetry prize for a collection of work, Wellwater, which explores the destruction of the natural world.
Solie was announced as the winner at a ceremony held at the Wallace Collection on Monday evening, and will receive £25,000 in prize money from the TS Eliot Foundation. Wellwater, her sixth collection, co-won the Forward prize for best collection last October, alongside Vidyan Ravinthiran’s Avidyā.
Solie’s five previous collections are Short Haul Engine, Modern and Normal, Pigeon, The Road In Is Not the Same Road Out and The Caiplie Caves, for which she was nominated for the TS Eliot prize in 2019.
Wellwater emerged from a shortlist that included Tom Paulin’s Namanlagh, Isabelle Baafi’s Chaotic Good, Nick Makoha’s The New Carthaginians and Sarah Howe’s Foretokens. Solie teaches half-time at the University of St Andrews, and lives in Canada the rest of the year.
