As published by the Guardian online...The poet Jo Shapcott, who began the year by winning the Costa book of the year award for her collection Of Mutability, has ended 2011 by being named the latest recipient of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.
Decided by a committee of "eminent men and women of letters" selected by poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, the medal is given for either a body of work or for an individual poem, and counts among its previous recipients WH Auden, who took it in 1936, Siegfried Sassoon and John Betjeman. Shapcott was chosen for her body of work, including Of Mutability, which traced the poet's experience of breast cancer, Buckingham Palace has announced.
Duffy called the award "the true crowning" of a career which has seen Shapcott take the National Poetry Competition twice, the Commonwealth poetry award and the Forward prize. The poet laureate praised the "calm but sparkling Englishness" of Shapcott's poetry, which she said "manages to combine accessibility with a deeply cerebral engagement with all the facets of being human – alert to art and science, life and death".
"Her peers will be very proud and happy for her today," added Duffy. The medal was established in 1933 by George V at the suggestion of John Masefield, then poet laureate. It shows the crowned effigy of the queen on one side, and on the reverse an image of Truth holding the flame of inspiration. Shapcott, who turned down a CBE in 2003 over her concerns about the Iraq war, will be presented with the medal by the Queen next year, said Buckingham Palace.
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