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Cold Calls Wins Whitbread

Christopher Logue, the 79-year-old British poet, has won this year's Whitbread Prize for Poetry, with his new book Cold Calls, beating the favourite, David Harsent, who had previously won The Forward Prize for his strong collection Legion - as well as two innovative younger poets, Jane Yeh and Richard Price. (Harsent has read for the Oxfam series on several occasions, and Yeh is due to read for Oxfam in Marylebone next month.)

From the start, the shortlist was odd, even a little left-field, as several of the very best books of the year, from Hill, Morrissey, Stammers, Petit, Clark, Oswald and others were not even selected.

Nonetheless, Eyewear congratulates Mr. Logue for his win. As he says himself, it appears to be his first prize, and, after such a long career, that alone should be cause for some muted celebration, even on the part of those other poets he beat to the £5,000.

See the link below for more on this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1677536,00.html

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