Nick Laird follows idol Heaney to Faber prize win
Poet's 'spiky and beautiful' second collection takes £1,000 Geoffrey Faber Memorial prize
Alison Flood writing in the guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 31 March 2009

'Spiky' ... Nick Laird. Photograph: Murdo Macleod

Nick Laird has said that Seamus Heaney's debut Death of a Naturalist changed everything for him, so it must be particularly satisfying for the poet and novelist to pick up the prize which helped launch Heaney's own career over 40 years ago.

Laird's second poetry collection, On Purpose, was selected as the winner of the £1,000 Geoffrey Faber memorial prize, an annual award given to verse and prose in alternate years in honour of the founder of Faber & Faber. Previous winners include Paul Muldoon, JM Coetzee, Graham Swift and Heaney, back in 1968 for his debut collection Death of a Naturalist.

The full report in The Guardian.