Irish poet Seamus Heaney tonight won the TS Eliot Prize for Poetry, for his collection District and Circle.
Heaney's work was chosen from a shortlist of 10.
His 12th collection of poems harks back to a summer in the early 1960s when Heaney spent rush hours travelling to work on the District and Circle line of the London Underground.
Chairman of the judges Sean O'Brien said: "Seamus Heaney's District and Circle is a commanding, exhilarating work.
"In an outstandingly strong field, this was an exceptional collection of poems."
Heaney was unable to attend the ceremony at The Wallace Collection in central London to collect his £10,000 prize from Eliot's widow, Valerie.
He sent a message which read: "There are many reasons to feel honoured by the award of this prize: the aura of TS Eliot's name, for a start; the distinction of the previous winners; the quality of the other poets on this year's shortlist; and the high regard in which the judges are held.
"When I called one of the poems in District and Circle 'Anything Can Happen' I wasn't thinking that anything like this would happen to the book, but it certainly expresses what I am feeling at the moment."
Born in Co Derry, Heaney published his first collection, Death Of A Naturalist, in 1966.
In 1995 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
In 1996 he won the Whitbread Book of the Year with The Spirit Level, and he repeated the feat in 1999 with Beowulf.
The other poets on the shortlist were Simon Armitage, Paul Farley, WN Herbert, Jane Hirshfield, Tim Liardet, Paul Muldoon, Robin Robertson, Penelope Shuttle and Hugo Williams.