T. S. Eliot Prize (Truman State University) T. S. Eliot Prize (Truman State University) The T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry is awarded annually by Truman State University, which is a United States university located in Missouri. First awarded in 1997, the prize is given "for the best unpublished book-length collection of poetry in English, in honor of native Missourian T. S. Eliot’s considerable intellectual and artistic legacy". Eliot won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. The prize includes publication of the collection as well as a purse of $2000. Poets submit their unpublished collections to Truman State University Press for each year's competition. A well-known
T. S. Eliot one of the most moving poems Eliot wrote, and perhaps the "most perfect", though it was not well received by everyone. The poem's groundwork of orthodox Christianity discomfited many of the more secular "literati". In 1939, Eliot published a book of light verse, "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats" ("Old Possum" was Ezra Pound's nickname for him). This first edition had an illustration of the author on the cover. In 1954, the composer Alan Rawsthorne set six of the poems for speaker and orchestra in a work titled "Practical Cats". After Eliot's death, the book was adapted as the basis