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A posthumous award confirms Janet Frame as one of New Zealand's greatest and most versatile writers.
Frame, who died three years ago, has won the poetry category of the 2007 Montana New Zealand Book Awards for her collection The Goose Bath.
The prize adds to numerous other recognitions of the reclusive writer including being a nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature and being a member of the Order of New Zealand.
Spokeswoman for the Janet Frame Charitable Trust and Frame's niece, Pamela Gordon, said it was a little known fact that poetry was always her aunt's first love.
She said the family was "delighted" with the award. "It was the fruit of 50 years of writing."
Despite a prolific writing career, including 11 novels and a three-volumed autobiography, Frame only had one previous collection of poetry published - The Pocket Mirror.
"It [the award] is a long overdue recognition of her as a poet."
Ms Gordon said Frame had always intended for the work to be published after her death.
"When I first realised she had so many wonderful poems it was just two or three months before she died.
"I said 'Oh, let's quickly get these out so the public can see you're a great poet', and she said 'I don't need for them to tell me that'."
The poems spanned Frame's writing career and painted a portrait of her and her developing writing skills, Ms Gordon said.
Book Awards judges' convener Paul Millar said the work showed off Frame's innovative, imaginative and memorable use of language. The $5000 prize money would go towards writers' grants that Frame's Charitable Trust awards each year on her birthday.
Frame's book will be judged alongside the winner of the fiction category for the Montana Medal for Fiction or Poetry.
- NZPA
