A PROFESSOR of English from Leeds Trinity University has been announced as the winner of a prestigious international award.

Professor Oz Hardwick won his award in the poetry category of the 2019 Rubery Book Prize list.

Professor Hardwick’s winning collection, Learning to Have Lost, was published last September by Recent Work Press in Canberra, where he had a short residency. The collection is a series of prose poems on the subject of loss.

He said: “Naturally, I’m delighted. Once they’re written, books sail off into the unknown, and the writer never knows where they will come ashore – or if they’ll just sink. So, it’s wonderful that Learning to Have Lost has received such a welcome, and I’m humbled to be in company with some of my predecessors.”

Learning to Have Lost has now been issued in a second edition, and Professor Hardwick is also at the heart of a surge in popularity of the prose poem. He co-edited The Valley Press Anthology of Prose Poetry which was published in July, which features the best in contemporary British writing, including work by the new Poet Laureate Simon Armitage. The anthology was launched at a major international symposium at Leeds Trinity University last month. Hardwick’s own new poetry collection, The Lithium Codex, was also published in July by The Hedgehog Poetry Press.

Learning to Have Lost looks at the passing of time, memory, old age, illness and death. It is available from Recent Work Press, priced $8.95.