Philip Gross wins TS Eliot poetry prize for The Water Table Collection of poems on the Severn estuary lands top award after beating tough opposition, including two former winners

A university professor’s detailed and lyrical meditations on the ever-changing waters of the Severn estuary tonight won him the UK’s most lucrative poetry prize against tough opposition.

Gross is a well established poet but far from being a household name. He was named winner of the 2009 TS Eliot prize at a ceremony in London, beating competition from his better-known peers such as Alice Oswald, Sharon Olds and Christopher Reid.

Gross, professor of creative writing at the University of Glamorgan, won the prize for The Water Table – a themed collection that is metaphysical and political and religious, but has at its heart the subject of water.

Simon Armitage, who chaired the panel of three poets – the others were Colette Bryce and Penelope Shuttle – that chose the winner, said he hoped the win would introduce people to a new voice in contemporary poetry.

He said The Water Table stood out because it was not merely a collection of poems but also “so obviously a book”.

Armitage added: “It is so concentrated and keen-eyed and patient. The poems have a beauty and a craft to the writing and it’s hard to imagine how he kept it up over 64 pages.”

Gross’s collection had an unintended topicality to it when it was published last November, with news headlines telling stories of flooding in Cumbria. The dangers of water are explored in the collection but his poems also address subjects such as climate change, the environment, the human race’s fragile place in the planet and also what constitutes art.

There are also poems about the more mundane human experience, such as arguing in an Ikea car park.