T. S. Eliot Prize (Truman State University) poet is chosen each year to judge the collections, and to select the winner and several finalists. The winners, collection titles, and judges of the annual Prize are listed below. In addition to the winner, several finalists are announced for each year's competition. The complete list of winners and finalists is posted at the Truman State University Press website. As examples, Deborah Warren and A. M. Juster were finalists, and both Patty Seyburn and Daniel Bourne have been finalists twice. T. S. Eliot Prize (Truman State University) The T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry is awarded annually by Truman State
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."