Andrew McMillan has been named the winner of the 2015 Guardian First Book Award for his poetry collection, Physical.
McMillan is the first poet to win the award and only the second to make the shortlist since it was founded in 1999.
His collection of poems - published by Jonathan Cape - interrogates the idea of masculinity, whilst exploring sensuality and vulnerability.
The Guardian First Book Award, run in conjunction with Waterstones, celebrates the finest first-time writers across all genres who have had their first book published in English in the last year.
This year’s judges were broadcaster Emily Maitlis, historian Tom Holland, Forward-winning poet Kei Miller and critic Alex Clark. They were joined by five Waterstones reading groups in Edinburgh, London, Lewes, Leeds and Manchester.
McMillan collected his £10,000 prize at a ceremony in central London on Wednesday, 25 November 2015. Past winners include Zadie Smith’s novel White Teeth, Chris Ware’s graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth and Alexander Masters’ biography Stuart: A Life Backwards.
Claire Armitstead, Guardian books editor and chair of judges, said: “This is the first time a poetry collection has won the prize in 17 years, and only the second time a poet has even made the shortlist. It’s a thrilling development for us, as poetry so rarely breaks through in generalist prizes.
“Nearly 300 years ago Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote in his famous essay, Defence of Poetry, that “Poetry enlarges the circumference of the imagination by replenishing it with thoughts of ever new delight”. Shelley’s assertion that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world” might seem a bit optimistic in our prosaic times, but Andrew McMillan’s breathtaking collection shows that good poetry can and does still enlarge, replenish and delight. It is wonderful that a collection so tightly focused on masculinity and gay love could have such a wide appeal, across age and gender. It surprised us all with the best sort of ambush, emerging from an extremely strong and vibrant shortlist as the unanimously agreed winner.”
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Notes to editors
For more information please contact:
media.enquiries@theguardian.com or 0203 353 3696
Books must have been published between 1 January 2014 and 31 December 2014.
This year’s Guardian First Book Award judges were as follows:
- Emily Maitlis - BBC journalist and newsreader
- Tom Holland - British writer and historian
- Kei Miller - Forward-winning poet
- Alex Clark - Guardian journalist
- Claire Armitstead - books editor, the Guardian
- Stuart Broom - events programmer, Waterstones
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