A DISTURBING tale of lost innocence by a North-East university lecturer has won the world's most prestigious poetry prize.

The TS Eliot Foundation has announced this evening that this year’s winner of the 2016 TS Eliot Prize is Jacob Polley for his “remarkable” new collection Jackself.

After months of reading and deliberation, judges Ruth Padel (chair), Julia Copus and Alan Gillis chose the winner from a strong shortlist of six women and four men.

Ms Padel said: “All three judges were agonised by choosing between such brilliant books.

"But the winning collection, Jacob Polley’s Jackself, is a firework of a book; inventive, exciting and outstanding in its imaginative range and depth of feeling.

Mr Polley, who was born in Carlisle in 1975, lives in Whitley Bay and is a senior lecturer in creative writing at Newcastle University.

He is the author of four poetry collections, The Brink (2003), Little Gods (2006), The Havocs (2012) and Jackself (2016), all published by Picador.

He received an Eric Gregory Award in 2002, and both The Brink and The Havocs were shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize.

In 2004, he was named one of the ‘Next Generation’ of the twenty best new poets in Britain.

His first novel, Talk of the Town, a demotic and funny coming-of-age murder mystery, won the 2010 Somerset Maugham Award.

Ms Padel formally announced that Mr Polley was the winner at the TS Eliot Prize Award Ceremony in the Wallace Collection. He was presented with a cheque for £20,000 and each shortlisted poet received a cheque for £1,500 in recognition of their achievement in winning a place on the shortlist.