Montana New Zealand Book Awards

Friday 27 July 2007

Top Poetry Prize Presented Posthumously

Janet Frame has won the poetry category of the 2007 Montana New Zealand Book Awards for her collection, The Goose Bath three years after her death.

A previous recipient of awards for both fiction and non fiction, the win confirms her place as one of our greatest and most adaptable writers.

She competed against The Year of the Bicycle by James Brown and One Shapely Thing by Dinah Hawken to take the prize.

The announcement made today marks Montana Poetry Day. With more than 45 events happening around the country, it is a major celebration of the nation's poets and their writing.

Montana New Zealand Book Awards judges' convenor, Dr Paul Millar says Frame's edge is as we should expect, her use of inventive, imaginative and memorable language.

'She steps lightly and precisely across the surface of the swamp of words.She is also highly original.'

Spokesperson for the Janet Frame Charitable Trust and Janet Frame's niece, Pamela Gordon, says poetry was always her aunt's first love.

'This win marks a long overdue recognition for Janet Frame as a poet. She didn't seek accolades for her work, but she would have been very pleased that The Goose Bath poems have found favour.'

Despite a prolific writing career, Janet Frame had only one previously published collection of poetry (The Pocket Mirror, 1967) before The Goose Bath. She is the author of eleven novels, five collections of stories, two volumes of poetry, a children's book and a three-volumed autobiography.

Janet Frame is New Zealand's most distinguished writer: CBE, member, Order of New Zealand, nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Honorary Foreign Member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, Honorary Doctorate in Literature, University's of Otago and Waikato. She was a Burns Scholar and a Sargeson Fellow. Janet Frame also won the New Zealand Scholarship in Letters and the Hubert Church Award for Prose.

Born in Dunedin in 1924, Janet Frame died in January 2004.

Winner of NZSA Best First Book for poetry announced

Victoria University Press author, Airini Beautrais has proven she is an author to watch by winning the NZSA Jessie McKay Best First Book for Poetry for her collection, Secret Heart.

Montana New Zealand Book Awards poetry category advisor, Dr John Newton says Beautrais' book is extremely well-conceived.

'[Secret Heart has] a decisive choice of form perfectly matched to an original choice of content'.

The Goose Bath, published by Random House New Zealand, will be judged alongside the winner of the Fiction category for the ultimate prize, the Montana Medal for Fiction or Poetry (formerly called the Deutz prize). The winner will be announced at the Montana New Zealand Book Awards ceremony and gala dinner in Auckland at Sky City on Monday 30 July.

Pamela Gordon, will accept the prize of $5,000 on behalf of Janet Frame, as winner of the Poetry category at this gala dinner.

The principal sponsors of the Montana New Zealand Book Awards are Montana and Creative New Zealand. The awards are managed by Booksellers New Zealand and supported by Book Publishers Association of New Zealand, the New Zealand Society of Authors and Book Tokens (NZ) Ltd.

ENDS

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