Mimi Khalvati said: “When I first received news of my award, I felt amazed, incredulous, thrilled and not a little terrified. But more than that, I just felt happy”
Mimi Khalvati reacts as she receives King’s Gold Medal for Poetry 2023
Britain’s King Charles has approved the award of the King’s Gold Medal for Poetry for the year 2023 to Mimi Khalvati.
The Gold Medal for Poetry was established by King George V in 1933 and is awarded for excellence in poetry. Each year’s recipient is from the United Kingdom or a Commonwealth Realm.
On receiving the award, Mimi Khalvati said: “When I first received news of my award, I felt amazed, incredulous, thrilled and not a little terrified. But more than that, I just felt happy.
“To receive such an affirmation of my work and to be numbered among the wonderful poets who have been previous recipients is an honour and privilege I am deeply grateful for.”
She continued, “I started writing late in life and have always felt myself to be serving an unending apprenticeship, steeped in the process of becoming a poet, and never actually being one.
“But now, in my eightieth year, I am! And through my writing years I have been lucky enough to see many barriers of gender, age, ethnicity, fall, and to be welcomed into a community of poets, many of whom I have worked with, shared poems with and learned from.”