The Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry is awarded for a book of verse published by someone in any of the Commonwealth realms. Originally the award was open only to British subjects living in the United Kingdom, but in 1985 the scope was extended to include people from the rest of the Commonwealth realms. Recommendations to the Queen for the award of the Medal are made by a committee of eminent scholars and authors chaired by the Poet Laureate. In recent times, the award has been announced on the (traditional date of the) birthday of William Shakespeare, 23 April. But Don Paterson was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry alongside the 2010 New Year Honours.
The Gold Medal for Poetry was instituted by King George V in 1933 at the suggestion of the British royal court's Poet Laureate, John Masefield.
The obverse of the medal bears the crowned effigy of The Queen. The idea of the reverse, which was designed by the late Edmund Dulac, is: "Truth emerging from her well and holding in her right hand the divine flame of inspiration - Beauty is truth and Truth Beauty". The latter part of this description is a quotation from John Keats's poem, 'Ode on a Grecian Urn'.
Read more about Queen's Gold Medal For Poetry: Recipients
Famous quotes containing the words queen, gold and/or poetry:
“I do not so much rejoice that God hath made me to be a Queen, as to be a Queen over so thankful a people.”
—Elizabeth I (1533–1603)
“The intelligent have a right over the ignorant, namely, the right of instructing them. The right punishment of one out of tune, is to make him play in tune; the fine which the good, refusing to govern, ought to pay, is, to be governed by a worse man; that his guards shall not handle gold and silver, but shall be instructed that there is gold and silver in their souls, which will make men willing to give them every thing which they need.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)