Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy picks up category prize.
The Bees has won the poetry category of the Costa Book Awards. The Bees is Carol Ann Duffy's first collection since being appointed Poet Laureate in 2009.
The category prize winners each win £5,000, and were chosen by separate panels of three judges.
The judges – Sarah Crown, William Fiennes and Sharon Murray – said of
The Bees: 'These tender, fluent, surprising poems feel at once contemporary and alive with the history of poetry.'
The Costa Book Awards recognise some of the most outstanding and enjoyable books of the last year by writers based in the UK and Ireland. Originally established in 1971 by Whitbread PLC, Costa announced its takeover of the sponsorship of the UK's popular and prestigious book prize in 2006.
The Bees will now compete for the 2011 Costa Book of the Year against the other category winners for Costa Biography Award, Novel Award, First Novel Award and the Costa Children’s Award.
The five Costa Book Award winners, each of whom will receive £5,000, were selected from 568 entries. The winner, selected by a panel of judges chaired by Editor of the London Evening Standard, Geordie Greig and comprising Hugh Dennis, Dervla Kirwan, Mary Nightingale, William Fiennes, Flora Fraser, Patrick Gale, Jojo Moyes and Eleanor Updale, will be announced at an awards ceremony hosted by presenter and broadcaster Penny Smith at Quaglino’s in central London on Tuesday 24th January 2012.
This is the latest in a string of acclaim for the collection, which was also shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Waterstone's UK Author of the Year (Galaxy Book Awards 2011) and was selected as a Recommendation by the Poetry Book Society for their Winter Quarter.
Carol Ann Duffy has contributed the three best-selling poetry titles of 2011 and
The Bees has already achieved Bookscan sales of over 20,000.
For more information, visit the Costa Book Award website >