Nick Laird wins Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize,

Nick Laird has said that Seamus Heaney's debut Death of a Naturalist changed everything for him, so it must be particularly satisfying for the poet and novelist to pick up the prize which helped launch Heaney's own career over 40 years ago.

Laird's second poetry collection, On Purpose, was selected as the winner of the £1,000 Geoffrey Faber memorial prize, an annual award given to verse and prose in alternate years in honour of the founder of Faber & Faber.