WOMEN PRIZE-WINNERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 208, 3 September 1927, Page 22

WOMEN PRIZE-WINNERS.

Two women stand forth as poetry prize-winners in England, Miss Gertrude Trevelyan wins the Newdigate Prize for English Verse, and thus enters the long line of names that include Tennyson and Oscar Wilde. The other winner is Miss V. Sackville-West, poet and novelist, who receives the Hawthornden Prize of £100, the greatest offered in England for a long poem called "The Land." Of her we read in the London "Morning Post": —

"Miss Sackville-West is the daughter of Lord and Lady Sackville, of Knole, Sevenoaks. and is the wife of the Hon. Harold Nicholson, who is a member of the Diplomatic Corps at Teheran. Her best-known novels are 'The Heir' and The Dragon in Shallow Waters.* She has published short poems, but The Land' is the first long poem that she has attempted. The poem concerns the life and struggles of a farmer in Kent."

In making the announcement of the award, John Drinkwater said: —

"The award this year is not made for a play or a novel or a book of poems, but lor a long poem. I suppose that on the rubbish heap of literature bad long poems hold an easy and lamentable pride of place, but I do not hesitate to say that a good long poem is the noblest kind of literature, and occasionally an author without any urging will write a good long poem, and then it is a fitting occasion for caps in the air. Such a one is *The Land.' by Miss Vita Sackville-West. It is a kind of farmer's calendar and a closely detailed account of a farm's year, and it is written with the authority of one who knows her land in all its moods and seasons from childhood."