New Malahat Review prize to honour Victoria poet P. K. Page

A $1,000 annual award for poetry will be made by the Malahat Review in the name of well-known and award-winning poet P. K. Page. Ms. Page celebrates her 90th birthday this month and the award will be made to the author of the best poem or sequence of poems published in the previous year in the magazine, which is published at the University of Victoria.

The winner of the first award will be selected by Sooke writer Marilyn Bowering and will be announced in the spring 2007 issue of the magazine.

Malahat editor John Barton said:

"It is a great honour for the magazine to have the opportunity to give out an award in P.K.'s name," he said. "She is one of Canada's most respected and iconic poets whose accomplishments have been an inspiration to several generations of writers."

Page was born in England in 1916 and came to Canada three years later. She was educated in Calgary and Winnipeg and studied art in New York and Brazil.Her first major publication, an anthology titled Unit of Five, was published by Ryerson Press in 1944.

In 1954, Page won the Governor General's Award for poetry with her work The Metal and the Flower. Since then she has continued to write prolifically with her most recent offering, the short fiction piece Up on the Roof, scheduled for release in 2007.