On Monday night the TS Eliot prize for poetry was awarded to Jen Hadfield, a 30-year-old relative newcomer living in Shetland. This poem, taken from her book Nigh-No-Place, is her response to working in a fish factory.

Ten-minute break haiku

Just the blades prattling
on cartilage - cut here, here -
a good, fat fillet.

My friend the Cuckoo
Wrasse, hauled from his dark holler,
wilting on ice. Alas.

Breading haddock, I
bury in the coarse, bright dunes
the pale, wet children.

I finger the curious, quilted sphincter, being
like this, inside, too.

Gut-worms, christ! Still I
pluck them from the membranes,
one by one.

• Bloodaxe Books 2008