The winner of this year's Edwin Morgan Poetry Prize [3], the largest U.K.-based award for a single poem, was announced earlier today at the Edinburgh International Book Festival [4]. Scottish poet Jane McKie, who runs the small publisher Knucker Press, was chosen from an all-female shortlist [5] to win the five thousand pound prize (roughly $8,250) for her poem "Leper Window, St. Mary the Virgin."

Judge Kona Macphee says the poem, while relatively brief at forty-seven words, "epitomizes everything I love about poetry. It revels in the musicality of language and is magnificently concise, evoking a whole lost world in a dozen elegantly understated lines."

McKie has been previously honored for her debut collection, Morocco Rococo (Cinnamon Press), which was awarded the Scottish Arts Council's prize for a first book in 2007. To read her Morgan Prize–winning poem, visit the Guardian's website [6].

The annual prize, named for the late Scottish poet Edwin Morgan, is given for a poem by a writer of any nationality.