Peter Porter wins Britain's biggest prize for poetry

Britain's biggest poetry award was won by Peter Porter last night. But this year's Forward Poetry Prize has been overshadowed by controversy, with the original chairman of the judges standing down amid allegations of bias.

Porter, 73, who won the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in April, won the £10,000 Forward prize for Max Is Missing, his 16th collection.

The prize looked in jeopardy a few months ago when the poet Michael Donaghy stood down as chairman because of complaints that the jury might be biased towards his own publisher, Picador. His place as chairman was taken by the prize's organiser, William Sieghart, the magazine publisher and founder of the Forward Poetry Trust.

Mr Sieghart said the claims of bias were "groundless" and that Donaghy stepped downto ensure "that the panel once again has nothing to consider but the quality of the books, so that every book had an even chance".

Porter, who is published by Picador, arrived in Britain from Australia 50 years ago and has lived here ever since. He has frequently visited Australia and considers himself part of the poetical worlds of both nations. Since 1968 he has been a full-time poet, freelance literary journalist, broadcaster and reviewer.

The judges said of Porter that "few poets now share his sense of the big picture, his ability to read the small event against the waxings and wanings of culture and empire".

Two other awards were given at the ceremony in London. Tom French won the £5,000 Waterstone's Prize for Best First Collection 2002 for Touching the Bones. Medbh McGuckian won the £1,000 Tolman Cunard Prize for Best Single Poem with "She is in the Past, She has his Grace". The poem was published in the poetry magazine The Shop.

Mr Sieghart said: "I am delighted that Peter Porter is the winner of this year's Forward Prize by unanimous decision. Porter is one of the most distinguished poets at work in Britain today. Max is Missing is a contemporary, witty, urbane and vibrant collection. To anybody with any curiosity, it will be seen at once as both urgent and timeless. It is an elegiac, satirical and contemplative delight."

The other judges were the BBC arts correspondent Rosie Millard, the poet Lavinia Greenlaw, Peter Stothard, editor of The Times Literary Supplement and Sean O'Brien, twice winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection.

Last words

(From Peter Porter's collection Max Is Missing)

In the beginning was the Word,

Not just the word of God but sounds

Where Truth was clarified or blurred.

Then Rhyme and Rhythm did the rounds

And justified their jumps and joins

By glueing up our lips and loins.

Once words had freshness on their breath.

The Poet who first saw that Death

Has only one true rhyme was made

The Leader of the Boys' Brigade.

Dead languages can scan and rhyme

Like birthday cards and Lilac Time.

And you can carve words on a slab

Or tow them through the air by plane,

Tattoo them with a painful jab

Or hang them in a window pane.

Unlike our bodies which decay, Words, first and last, have come to stay.