AUSTRALIAN poet Peter Porter has won Britain’s top poetry award – – his second major gong this year.

Porter, 73, was this week awarded the Waterstone’s Prize for the best collection of poetry for his book Max is Missing.

The award means Porter has won the two most prestigious British poetry prizes this year, after earlier collecting the Queen’s Medal for Poetry. The double success places him among the world’s leading poets.

Porter has been living in Britain since the 1950s but has always retained strong links with Australia.

He said last night the $28,000 prize was the largest amount he had ever won as a poet. “It’s very pleasant to have the prize arrive at a time of life when you could do with a few pounds,” he said.

“I am not a young man. It’s nice to have it happen to you when you are an old person on the docks, a ship taken out of the water.”

Chairman of the judging committee William Sieghart described the winning collection as “urgent and timeless, an elegiac, satirical and contemplative delight”.

Peter Rose, editor of Australian Book Review, described Porter’s win as “great, fantastic”.

“Peter is widely recognised as one of the half-dozen important poets Australia has ever produced. What is remarkable about him is that he has now been publishing works of the highest quality for almost half a century. Not many poets have such a long literary lifespan.”

Leading contemporary poet John Tranter said the win was a great thing for Australian poetry. Unlike other expatriates such as Germaine Greer and Clive James who felt they had to act the larrikin to be noticed, he said, Porter had always been the perfect gentleman.

“He has done much to make Britons aware that we have a lot of very worthwhile poets,” Tranter said.

Credit: Peter Porter