The list of writers being considered for the £60,000 Dylan Thomas prize has been announced, and poet Nick Laird holds two of the fifteen spots – one for his novel, Utterly Monkey and one for his collection of poetry, To a Fault, which was short listed for the 2005 Forward Poetry prize for a first collection. Laird has attracted attention on a number of fronts, including that of being the husband of hot (in all senses of the word) novelist Zadie Smith, and being one of that “whole Cambridge writing crowd”.

The reviews of To a Fault are mixed – depressing is one word used to describe them, but no one denies the talent of the writer, who is also a novelist and lawyer. The collection includes love poems and political poems and poems that mix love and politics, all of them seen through the caustic eye of a young man who grew up in the shadows of a Northern Ireland where “the shooting has all but stopped, but the divisions remain marked and clear”. “You don”t understand how odd your childhood was until you get away,” he said in an interview with Guardian writer Tanya Gold. “Then you realise that it”s not normal to be stopped every day by soldiers with guns who look in your schoolbag. The haunted schoolboy comes through clearly in this first collection. Laird is already at work on a second collection.

The Dylan Thomas Prize was established in 2004 and is awarded each year to an outstanding writer under the age of 30. It”s the brainchild of a Swansea cultural critic, Peter Stead, who got the idea from a small town in Italy which awards an annual prize for literature. The shortlist will be revealed in September and the winner of the £60,000 prize will be named at a ceremony at Swansea”s Brangwyn Hall on October 27 – the date of Dylan Thomas”s birthday.