The national poet of Wales, Gillian Clarke, has become the first woman to win the Wilfred Owen poetry award, for a sustained body of work that includes memorable war poems. Clarke, who received the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2010, has written a number of poems about the war in Bosnia, and the first Gulf war. Poems such as The Field Mouse and Siege use the Welsh landscape as a backdrop and metaphor for human hope and human cruelty. The award is presented biennially; previous winners have been Jon Stallworthy, Christopher Logue, Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Tony Harrison, and Dannie Abse.