News at Eleven: One of the judges, the poet Elaine Feinstein,

was astonished to learn that Letter to Patience [by John Haynes] had been rejected repeatedly. “We were knocked out by the ease with which he could control the pace of his three-line verse and the richness of the things he remembers about Nigeria,” she said.

from The Times: Poet's letter from an African bar beats literati to take top prize

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