Award: Diana Brebner, Flora & Fauna 1997 Governor General's Awards: Dionne Brand, Land to Light On (English); Pierre Nepveu, Romans-fleuves (French) Pat Lowther Award: Marilyn Bowering, Autobiography Prix Alain-Grandbois: Claude Beausoleil, Grand hôtel des étrangers Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize: Margo Button, The Unhinging of Wings Prix Émile-Nelligan: Patrick Lafontaine, L’Ambition du vide India Sahitya Akademi Award : Leeladhar Jagudi for Anubhav Ke Aakash Mein Chaand Poetry Society India National Poetry Competition : Ranjit Hoskote for Portrait of a Lady New Zealand Montana New Zealand Book Awards, First Book Award for Poetry: Diane Brown, Before the Divorce We Go To Disneyland, Tandem Press United Kingdom Cholmondeley Award: Alison Brackenbury, Gillian Clarke, Tony Curtis, Anne Stevenson Eric Gregory Award: Matthew Clegg, Sarah Corbett, Polly Clark, Tim Kendall, Graham Nelson, Matthew Welton Forward Poetry Prize Best Collection: Jamie McKendrick, The Marble Fly (Oxford University Press) Forward Poetry Prize Best First Collection: Robin Robertson, A Painted Field (Picador) T. S. Eliot Prize (United Kingdom and Ireland): Don Paterson, God's Gift to Women Whitbread Award for poetry and book of the year: Ted Hughes, Tales from Ovid National Poetry Competition : Neil Rollinson for The Constellations United States Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize: Richard Blanco, City of a Hundred Fires Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry: Fred Chappell American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal in Poetry, John Ashbery AML Award for poetry to Susan Elizabeth Howe for Stone Spirits Bernard F. Connors Prize for Poetry: John Drury, "Burning the Aspern Papers" Bollingen Prize: Gary Snyder National Book Award for poetry: William Meredith, Effort at Speech: New & Selected Poems Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress: Robert Pinsky appointed Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Lisel Mueller: Live Together: New and Selected Poems Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize: William Matthews Wallace Stevens Award: Anthony Hecht Whiting Awards: Connie Deanovich, Forrest Gander, Jody Gladding, Mark Turpin Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets: John Haines North Carolina Poet Laureate: Fred Chappell appointed. Deaths Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article: January 19 – James Dickey, 73 (born 1923), American April 5 – Allen Ginsberg, 70 (born 1926), of liver cancer, American May 15 – Laurie Lee, 82, English poet, novelist and screenwriter August 27 – Johannes Edfelt, 92, Swedish October 19 – Stella Sierra, 80, (born 1917), Panamanian November 12: James Laughlin, 83, American poet, publisher and man of letters