Eidolon by Sandeep Parmar has been awarded the inaugural £5000 Ledbury Forte Poetry Prize the UK’s first prize dedicated to second poetry collections. Published by independent press Shearsman, Sandeep Parmar’s Eidolon is partly a modern revision of the Helen myth, which reflects upon Western civilisation from classical antiquity to the present.
The prize was judged by Spring 2017 PBS Choice Vahni Capildeo and Autumn 2017 Recommendation Tara Bergin. The winner was announced at the 21st Ledbury Poetry Festival. The judges commented: ‘Sandeep Parmar’s Eidolon rises slightly above the rest in its combination of intimacy and sweep. The language is sharp and contemporary, but also very gentle in places, and lyrical. There are lines which seem to reach far back (to Whitman and Shakespeare and Sappho, and of course to the book’s basis in the Helen of Troy myths), and there are other sections which use the stilted language of contemporary reports and news and snatches of conversation. A strange and compelling mix.’
Sandeep Parmar is Senior Lecturer in twentieth-century literature and creative writing at the University of Liverpool, Reviews Editor of The Wolf poetry magazine and author of Reading Mina Loy’s Autobiographies.
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