Belfast poet Ciarán Carson has won Britain's £10,000 Forward Prize for the best poetry collection. The award was announced yesterday at a ceremony in London's Groucho Club for his latest volume, Breaking News (Gallery Press).
This year's strong shortlist included fellow Irish poet Paul Muldoon, with Moy Sand and Gravel (Faber), which won this year's Pulitzer Prize for poetry, and the US poet laureate, Billy Collins, for Nine Horses (Picador).
The other shortlisted candidates were Ian Duhig for The Lammas Hireling (Picador) and Lavinia Greenlaw for Minsk (Faber).
Carson was born in Belfast in 1958, where he still lives. This month, he became the first professor of poetry at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen's University. Breaking News is Carson's ninth collection of poems. He has also published several books of prose, including The Star Factory and Fishing for Amber.
