Thoughtful and Stable

The Lyre brings you a special report this week from our High Modernist man in the Unreal City, Ulysses Research Grant:

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet

wrote T.S. Eliot when he worked in a City bank. Now, the Square Mile has returned the compliment by sponsoring the prize named in his honour.

The T.S. Eliot Prize is an annual £15k home improvements fund for poets sold by Waterstones (sorry, 'the world's top poetry award'). Earlier this year the future of the prize looked uncertain, after its administrators, the Poetry Book Society, lost their Arts Council funding.

Fortunately, Aurum Funds -- a private investment management firm founded on the philosophy of capital preservation, growth and transfer of wealth -- has agreed to transfer the wealth needed to save the world of poetry from imminent collapse.

Aurum aims to achieve this by managing assets in a thoughtful and stable manner, which makes it the perfect partner to a poetry book business (there are some legal bills at the Poetry Society it may be interested in too). To quote the inspiring words on the company's website:

'It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change' 

Clarence Darrow

For more hedge fund poetry, click here.

 *

The T.S. Eliot Prize is worth £15,000. According to The Lyre's sister publication, Hedge Fund Review, the minimum investment required by Aurum Funds is $25,000 -- or £15,500. With a bit of luck, sales of the winning title will help to make up the shortfall.*


* Sales of poetry can go down as well as up.