Three years after her death, Janet Frame has won the poetry category of the 2007 Montana New Zealand Book Awards for her collection The Goose Bath. A previous recipient of awards for both fiction and non-fiction, the win confirms Frame's place as one of this country's greatest and most adaptable writers. Victoria University Press author Airini Beautrais was also announced as the winner of the NZSA Jessie McKay Best First Book for Poetry for her collection, Secret Heart.Three years after her death, Janet Frame has won the poetry category of the 2007 Montana New Zealand Book Awards for her collection The Goose Bath. A previous recipient of awards for both fiction and non-fiction, the win confirms Frame's place as one of this country's greatest and most adaptable writers. Victoria University Press author Airini Beautrais was also announced as the winner of the NZSA Jessie McKay Best First Book for Poetry for her collection, Secret Heart.The Goose Bath competed against The Year of the Bicycle by James Brown and One Shapely Thing by Dinah Hawken to take the prize.

Montana New Zealand Book Awards judges' convenor Dr Paul Millar says Frame's edge is as we should expect, her use of inventive, imaginative and memorable language.

"She steps lightly and precisely across the surface of the swamp of words. She is also highly original."

Pamela Gordon, spokesperson for the Janet Frame Charitable Trust and Janet Frame's niece, says poetry was always her aunt's first love.

"This win marks a long overdue recognition for Janet Frame as a poet. She didn't seek accolades for her work, but she would have been very pleased that The Goose Bath poems have found favour."

Despite a prolific writing career, Frame had only one published collection of poetry, The Pocket Mirror (1967) before The Goose Bath. She is the author of eleven novels, five collections of stories, two volumes of poetry, a children's book and a three-volumed autobiography.

Janet Frame is New Zealand's most distinguished writer: CBE, member, Order of New Zealand, nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Honorary Foreign Member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, Honorary Doctorate in Literature, University's of Otago and Waikato. She was a Burns Scholar and a Sargeson Fellow. Janet Frame also won the New Zealand Scholarship in Letters and the Hubert Church Award for Prose.

31/7/07

Image: Janet Frame, 1924-2004.