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In a frank article in the Telegraph, this year’s TS Eliot award winner (announced last week), John Burnside, discusses the repercussions of winning the prestigious award.

As much as it has ever done, poetry renews and deepens the gift that most surely makes us human: the imagination. And that is as essential to public as it is to private life, because the more imaginative we are, the more compassionate we become – and that, surely, is the highest virtue of all. 

Read the full piece here.

The Trustees of the estate of Katherine Kavanagh have awarded the 2011 Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship, intended to assist poets in mid-career and worth €8,000 to each recipient, to Eileen Casey, Mark Granier and Michael O’Loughlin.

Eileen Casey, originally from Offaly, has lived in Tallaght, Co Dublin since the late 1970s. Her collections include Wall Street (Clothesline Press) and, most recently, From Bone to Blossom (Altents Publishing), a collaborative work with the artist Emma Barone.

Mark Granier’s third collection Fade Street was published by Salt Publishing in 2010; a portfolio of his photography is featured in the current issue of Irish Pages.

Michael O’Loughlin lived in mainland Europe for many years before returning to Ireland. His most recent collection is In This Life (Liffey Press, 2011).

Tomas Tranströmer delivered his Nobel Prize for Literature lecture yesterday with the assistance of actor Kristina Adolphson, actor Krister Henriksson, pianist Roland Pöntinen, conductor Gustaf Sjöqvist's Chamber Choir and others.

For more visit nobelprize.org