£10,000 prize for collection 'without a wasted word'

MICK Imlah won the £10,000 Forward Prize for the best poetry collection of 2008 for his second collection in 20 years, The Lost Leader.

Imlah's poems range from classical mythology and historical figures to whisky and sport, including the rugby player Gordon Brown.

Reviewers have praised the emotional depth and tonal and technical range of the poet, aged 52, who was born in Aberdeen and works in London as an editor.

In Flower of Scotland, he writes of "Bruce's boys" after the killing of Red Comyn. "So by their murderous pride they raised the flag, that fell in the mud at Flodden, where Scotland braved a general massacre, of soldier, sovran, noble and downtrodden."

Of Gordon Brown, who died in 2001, he writes: "You, who had beaten Springbok and All Black; and when you put your spare hand on my back/ I felt at first a woman, then a kid/ And then a man, the thing you had intended."

The judges' chair, Frieda Hughes, said: "No word is wasted; nothing is unintentional. Quite brilliant."