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Mahesh

04/07/23 06:47 AM IST

Michael Rosen wins this year’s PEN Pinter Prize

In News
  • British children’s writer and performance poet Michael Rosen, 77, has been awarded the prestigious PEN Pinter Prize 2023.
PEN Printer Prize
  • The PEN Pinter Prize was established in 2009 by English PEN, the founding centre of a global literary network that promotes literature and human rights.
  • The prize was named after Harold Pinter, who was a vice president of English PEN and an active member of the International PEN Writers in Prison Committee (WiPC).
  • It was inspired by Pinter’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 2005, titled “Art, Truth and Politics”, in which he spoke about the role of the writer as a “citizen of the world” who questions and exposes the lies of power.
  • The prize aims to recognise writers who use their words to defend the dignity and rights of others.
  • The Prize is awarded annually to a writer resident in the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, the Commonwealth or former Commonwealth.
  • Established in 2009, previous winners of the PEN Pinter Prize include Hanif Kureishi (2010), Salman Rushdie (2014), Lemn Sissay (2019).
  • Writer Malorie Blackman won it last year.
Michael Rosen
  • Rosen was the sixth British Children’s Laureate between 2007 and 2009 and is known for making poetry accessible to children through his work and performances.
  • His themes are often social, political and ethical.
  • In On the Move: Poems about Migration (2020), for instance, a book of poems divided into four segments, Rosen explores contemporary and historical migrations through his family’s personal experience and from a global perspective on the ongoing migration drive across Europe.
  • He is among the first poets who visited schools extensively across the UK and even overseas, talking about poetry and literature.
  • Born to an educationalist father and a teacher mother, Rosen grew up around books.
  • Rosen’s first book of children’s poems, Mind Your Own Business, came out in 1974.
  • At present, he is a professor of children’s literature at Goldsmiths, University of London.
  • Some of Rosen’s most well-known books include You Can’t Catch Me (1982), which won the Signal Poetry Award; You Wait Till I Am Older Than You (1996), Rover (2007), Fantastic Mr Dahl (2012, on Roald Dahl’s writing life).
Source- Indian Express

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