In 2009, Carol Ann Duffy broke new ground for UK poets in several ways: she became Britain’s first female, first Scottish, and first openly gay Poet Laureate. Now, in the first days of 2012, she has won the UK’s prestigious Costa Poetry Award for her collection The Bees, her first collection of poetry since her 2009 honor. The award came with a prize of £5,000.

The Costa Book Awards, formerly the Whitbread Book Awards, are given to the year’s best First Novel, Novel, Biography, Poetry, and Children’s book. The winners in each genre move on to consideration for the Costa Book of the Year, worth an additional £30,000.

In a review of The Bees from The Guardian back in November 2011, Kate Kellaway cited Duffy for having “such remarkable gifts as a poet of grace, dexterity, and clarity. And there are poems here that are unforced and beautiful: gifts.”

See the rest of the Costa Book Award winners here: http://www.costabookawards.com/.

And read Kellaway’s review here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/nov/06/carol-ann-duffy-bees-review.

Photo credit to Manchester Metropolitan University