A poet from a village near Lancaster has won an international prize for his work about sheep in the Forest of Bowland.
David Canning from Wray has won the Ginkgo AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) Prize for Outstanding Poem of the British Landscape, for his poem The Bowland Sheep.
The Ginkgo Prize is a major international award for ecopoetry and David said he was "blown away" to win.
“The Forest of Bowland is a very special place, and I wanted to capture something of its magic," said David.
"But the poem is also about how I feel about it when I am not there, as I often have to work away from home for days at a time.
“Sheep are a major part of the agricultural economy in this part of the UK and this made them a great symbol of the vital co-dependence between humans and nature, and why we need to look after the place and protect it for future generations.
“I was completely blown away when I heard I had won this prize. It’s a great honour and I am pleased that the judges chose to recognise Bowland in this way.”
The Prize was announced at a ceremony at the Southbank Centre in London on Friday, at which a packed house was able to hear all the winners, runners-up and highly commended poets read their work.
The Ginkgo Prize is funded by the Edward Goldsmith Foundation and organised by The Poetry School.
The British Landscape Prize is sponsored by the National Association of AONBs and aims to recognise poems that convey the wonder of landscape in all its forms.
All winning poems will soon be published in the Ginkgo anthology, which will be available through the competition website. David’s latest poetry collection, The Celestial Spheres, was published in 2020, and is available online from the Amazon Bookstore.
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