T. S. Eliot Prize Eliot Estate. The T S Eliot Foundation took over the running of the T S Eliot Prize in 2016, appointing Chris Holifield, formerly director of the Poetry Book Society as its new director, when the former Poetry Book Society charity had to be wound up, with its book club and company name taken over by book sales agency Inpress Ltd in Newcastle. At present, the prize money is £20,000, with each of nine runners-up receiving £1500 each, making it the United Kingdom's most valuable annual poetry competition. The Prize has been called "the most coveted award in poetry". The shortlist
T. S. Eliot Eliot, his friend Robert Sencourt comments that the young Eliot "would often curl up in the window-seat behind an enormous book, setting the drug of dreams against the pain of living." Secondly, Eliot credited his hometown with fuelling his literary vision: "It is self-evident that St. Louis affected me more deeply than any other environment has ever done. I feel that there is something in having passed one's childhood beside the big river, which is incommunicable to those people who have not. I consider myself fortunate to have been born here, rather than in Boston, or New York, or London."