David Krump, a second-year student on Oxford University’s Master of Studies in Creative Writing course, has won the prestigious 2006 Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship.

The Fellowship carries an award of $15,000, which is among the largest offered to aspiring writers in the United States. It aims to nurture young poets at the beginning of their careers and allows them to continue in their study and writing of poetry.

David, from Kellogg College, submitted ten poems described by the Editor of the Foundation’s Poetry magazine, Christian Winman, as ‘consistently surprising, formally inventive and moving.’ The 2006 award was judged by poets Dana Levin and Joel Brouwer.

The competition, open to American citizens under 30 years old who are studying creative writing or English, attracted 145 applicants this year. The Poetry Foundation, which organises the award, is one of the largest and most prestigious literary organisations in the world. Founded in Chicago by Harriet Monroe in 1912, its magazine Poetry is the oldest monthly devoted to verse in the English-speaking world.

The Master of Studies in Creative Writing has attracted international attention since it was launched by Oxford University in October 2005. David Krump said: ‘The Master of Studies has alerted me to new possibilities for the creative direction of my work. The intensity of the course mirrors the intensity of those of us working on it.

‘I feel honoured to be a Ruth Lilly Fellow, especially considering the quality work the other nominees must have produced. The Fellowship suggests to me that I am heading in a proper direction. I hope one day to be a poet, rather than one who constantly attempts writing poems.’

David Krump’s poem ‘ Carnival’

‘I’d like to see you this way: in the café beside
the busy skirt of the waitress and a steady
sun on the chubby child’s head. We’ll order eggs
that arrive like broken atoms and coffee dark

and formulaic as all our evenings below these hard skies.
We’ll sip it hot and make little remark
while shooting from the city’s center silver trains
and time depart, point by point to the far towns

and tired stations of our simple stories. I’ll tell you
everything. While the cargo passes from Eden
to Nod and a little boat works the wind
whipping it sick in the harbour, one yellow sail, small

against the blue world, in a nearer park, a bright girl discovers
flight through the sudden song of birds, an ageing father
checkmates his son, laughter somersaults across cut grass,
a cricket plays the wicked piccolo of its legs,

I’ll push my empty plate aside and slide my solid hand
across the checkered plastic tablecloth to assure
you: See? You are you again – flesh and spine – not even
half the ghost you thought you were.’

For more information or photograph of David Krump, please contact the Press Office on 01865 280534 or email press.office@admin.ox.ac.uk.

Notes for Editors:

* Website:www.conted.ox.ac.uk/mstcw

* For further information on the Oxford University Master of Studies in Creative Writing course: clare.morgan@conted.ox.ac.uk or antonia.logue@conted.ox.ac.uk

* For further information on the Poetry Foundation, go to www.poetryfoundation.org

* David Krump was born in Hinsdale in Illinois in 1979. His work has appeared in Verse and Colorado Review. He is the literary co-ordinator at the Pump House Regional Arts Center.