Before Violence

T.S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted poet Joe Carrick-Varty’s outstanding second collection unflinchingly looks at inheritance, pain and memory. Longlisted for the Forward (Jerwood) Prize for Best First Collection 2026 A Poetry Book Society Recommendation Praising Joe Carrick Varty’s debut, the T.S. Eliot Prize judges observed that his work ‘confronts fraught spaces of addiction and domestic violence […its] lyricism shaped by a raw and fragmented reality’. His outstanding second collection reflects further on growing up under the cloud of abuse and alcoholism, unfolding compelling patterns as it examines how the past shapes our future lives. Bold and unusual in form, its three gripping long poems look unflinchingly and unforgettably at inheritance, pain and memory.