A NORTH-EAST poet has won £60,000 in Britain's newest and biggest literary award.

Anne Stevenson, 69, was announced as the winner of The Northern Rock Foundation Writer Award in a ceremony at Newcastle's Assembly Rooms yesterday.

She said: "I'm especially pleased that this award has been given for poetry, for as we all know, thousands of people write poetry but few except other poets and publishers of little magazines read it.

"This award comes as a confirmation or affirmation of my writing at a time when I was telling myself that I should perhaps retire from poetry."

The award is funded by The Northern Rock Foundation, which was set up by the Northern Rock Building Society in 1997 and is now one of the country's largest independent grant-making trusts.

It is designed to support the literary scene in the North-East and is open only to writers who live and work in the region.

The £60,000 prize is double the prize money of the Whitbread Book of the Year and treble the award for the Booker Prize.

Ms Stevenson has enjoyed a long and distinguished career and is one of the foremost poets of her generation. An example of her work is shown above.

A contemporary of Sylvia Plath, she wrote the acclaimed and controversial biography of her fellow poet, Bitter Fame, which was published in 1989. She moved to Durham in the 1980s after twice being made Northern Arts Literary Fellow and has lived there permanently since 1988.

She plans to use the award money for travel and to improve her foreign language skills.

The judging panel included Poet Laureate Andrew Motion and Pat Barker, the Booker Prize-winning author who is also based in County Durham.

She said: "Now at the age of 69, her creativity undimmed, and her craftsmanship enhanced by age, she is on the brink of a particularly interesting and productive period.