Jay Gao has today (29 June) won both an Eric Gregory Award and a Somerset Maugham Award this year for his thrilling debut poetry collection, Imperium (Carcanet Press). Through reimagined episodes from Homer’s Odyssey, Imperium asks questions about diaspora and how past lives permeate the present. It was described by judge Wayne Holloway Smith as ‘the work of a poet mind shot through with intellect and cultural capital’.