Sean O'Brien has published four poetry collections

The Waterstone's Prize for best first collection was awarded to John Stammers for Panoramic Lounge-Bar, bringing with it a �5,000 cash award.

The other big winner was Ian Duhig's The Lammas Hireling which won the �1,000 Tolman Cunard Prize for best single poem.

Judges included restaurant critic AA Gill, former winner Michael Donaghy and the Poetry Society's Christina Patterson.

Exploding view

O'Brien was educated at Cambridge University and has held fellowships in Denmark, Japan, Dundee and Leeds.

He won the Forward Prize in the same category - best collection - in 1995 for his work Ghost Train.

As well as writing he is also a poetry critic for the Sunday Times and founding editor of the literary magazine The Devil.

Stammers is a philosophy graduated of King's College, London, and has been writing poetry for six years.

Panoramic Lounge-Bar is described as a "world of old masters, pop icons, seascapes and film noir in exploded and exploding view".

London-born Duhig has previously been shortlisted for the TS Eliot and Whitbread prizes.

Since winning the National Poetry Competition in 1987 he has been teaching creative writing and is a Northern Arts Literary Fellow.

The best poems from all the entries will be published in the anthology The Forward Book of Poetry 2002.