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Don Paterson takes Queen's Gold Medal
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Don Paterson has been honoured with the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry 2009, an award instituted by George V in 1933 on the suggestion of Poet Laureate John Masefield. Recommendations are made by "a committee of eminent men and women of letters, selected by the Poet Laureate", Carol Ann Duffy.
Paterson was born and brought up in Dundee and worked as a professional musician and composer before being appointed Creative Writing Fellow in the English faculty at the University of St Andrews. Picador's Poetry Editor, he is the author of five collections of poetry, Nil Nil (1993), God's Gift to Women (1997), winner of both the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, The Eyes (1999), Landing Light (2003), which won both the T S Eliot Prize and the Whitbread Prize for Poetry, and Rain, winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection in 2009. Paterson was made an OBE in the 2008 Birthday Honours, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
The Medal is awarded for excellence in poetry, on the basis either of a body of work over several years, or for an outstanding poetry collection issued during the year of the award. The poems will have been published, and the poet will be from the United Kingdom or the Commonwealth. The obverse of the medal bears the crowned effigy of the Queen. The idea of the reverse, which was designed by the late Edmund Dulac, is “Truth is emerging from her well and holding in her right hand the divine flame of inspiration – Beauty is Truth and Truth Beauty”. Previous honorees include W H Auden, Siegfried Sassoon, John Betjeman, Philip Larkin, Robert Graves, Derek Walcott and Fleur Adcock.
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