London: British poet Jacob Polley has won the 2016 T.S. Eliot prize for his fourth collection, 'Jackself', a sequence of narrative poems partly inspired by his childhood in Cumbria, media reports said.

One of the judges of the panel, Ruth Padel said 'Jackself' was "a firework of a book; inventive, exciting and outstanding in its imaginative range and depth of feeling", the Guardian reported.

Polley emerged as winner of the UK's richest poetry prize at a ceremony on Monday evening at the Wallace Collection gallery in London. The book was chosen from a 10-strong shortlist including the winner of the 2015 Forward prize, Vahni Capildeo, and previous TS Eliot prize winner Alice Oswald.

Polley is the 23rd winner of the coveted £20,000 ($24,000) award. It was founded by T.S. Eliot's widow Valerie in 1993 and is now run by the TS Eliot Foundation.

Born in Carlisle in 1975, Polley studied Creative Writing at the University of Lancaster, and now teaches at Newcastle University in England.-Agency