Clifton, the first black woman to win US literary award

Washington, May 11 (UNI) Black poet Lucille Clifton has won the 2007 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, one of the most prestigious honour awarded to American poets.

In declaring the 1,00,000 dollars award, the judges cited Clifton's ''looming humaneness'' and ''moral quality''.

''Clifton has added enormously to the representation of the African-American experience in poetry and has been a kind of historical consciousness for her people and a public consciousness for us all,'' the judges said.

Clifton, 71, is the first black woman to win the Lilly Prize, which was established in 1986 and is presented annually by the Poetry Foundation.

Previous winners include such well-known poets as Adrienne Rich, John Ashbery, Donald Hall, Yusef Komunyakaa, and last year's winner, Richard Wilbur.

UNI