Alice Oswald stands out

"I’m uncomfortable about the fact that Aurum Funds, an investment company which exclusively manages funds of hedge funds, is sponsoring the administration of the Eliot Prize; I think poetry should be questioning not endorsing such institutions and for that reason I’m withdrawing from the Eliot shortlist."

Gosh. Alice Oswald withdraws from T S Eliot Prize over hedge fund sponsor.

Update: Now John Kinsella has withdrawn. I feel sorry for the Poetry Book Society (even if it is a little conservative and stuffy in its poetic tastes), which is a victim, indirectly, of hedge fund managers and other banksters... And TS Eliot was indeed a banker, although not, as far as we know, a bankster. Banking was a more respectable and responsible business in his day, as Ian Hislop recently explained in When Bankers Were Good.