Links of the week October 19 2020 (43)

I had had some babies, you see, during this period, and suddenly, I was spending all my time with children; I read only children's books; I talked only to children; I thought only about children. I had nothing to say to grown-ups, and most of the time, I didn't understand what they were saying to me. Why did they want to talk about real estate when they could talk about pterodactyls? Why were they obsessed with traffic when they could be obsessed with buried treasure? Adult conversation had become incredibly dull, and adult books, duller.

It was in this spirit that I decided I would become a children's book writer.

Announcing the 10 titles in the running for the £25,000 award for the year's best collection, the most valuable prize in British poetry, the poet and chair of judges, Lavinia Greenlaw, said the jury had been "unsettled, captivated and compelled" by the books they chose.

"When the pandemic hit, certain concerns of ours began to seem rather trivial," said Greenlaw, who together with the poets Mona Arshi and Andrew McMillan read 153 collections to come up with the shortlist. "We had to be convinced by them as relevant in a profoundly changed world, which meant that we had to be able to connect with them at the level of essential human experience, which is where I believe poetry is really produced, and poetry is really received."