<div><p>LONDON (Reuters) - British writer Christopher Reid won the Costa Book of the Year award on Tuesday for a work of poetry about his wife's death.</p><p>"A Scattering" beat the favorite, Colm Toibin's "Brooklyn," leaving the Irish novelist disappointed once again after he failed to win the Booker Prize after being shortlisted twice.</p><p>Josephine Hart, chairman of the judging panel, said "A Scattering" was chosen from five nominated works by a big majority.</p><p>"We feel that what Christopher Reid did was to take a personal tragedy and to make its emotions...universal. It is bizarrely life-enhancing, because it speaks of the triumph of love before and after death," she told reporters.</p><p>Asked whether she shared the view held by some that the work was like witnessing someone's private grief, Hart replied: "The fact that it is personal does not in any way detract from its power...as long as it is kept under artistic control."</p><p>"A Scattering" consists of four poetic sequences, the first written during his wife Lucinda Gane's final illness and the other three at intervals after her death. She died in October 2005.</p><p>SALES BOOST</p><p>For booksellers and publishers, the fact that a work of poetry won one of the country's top literary awards may limit its commercial impact.</p><p>Sales of books, especially novels, tend to spike sharply if nominated for a major prize, and more especially if they win.</p><p>"Poetry is inevitably more of a niche market than the other categories, but this collection seems to have struck a chord," said Jonathan Ruppin of Foyles bookshop.</p><p>"(Reid's) dignity and eloquence puts into words the feelings of anyone who has lost someone dear to them."</p><p>The annual Costa awards honor writers in five categories -- novel, first novel, biography, poetry and children's book -- from which an overall winner is chosen.</p><p>The category winners receive 5,000 pounds ($8,000) each and are eligible for the overall Costa Book of the Year, which comes with a cheque for 25,000 pounds.</p><p>The awards honor the most enjoyable book in each category, and works published in the last year by writers based in the United Kingdom and Ireland qualify.</p><p>Toibin's Brooklyn, winner of the novel category, told the story of Irish woman Eilis Lacey who travels to New York in the 1950s in search of a job.</p><p>The Costa debut novel prize was won by Raphael Selbourne for "Beauty," about a Bangladeshi woman on the run from her family, while the biography section went to Graham Farmelo for "The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius."</p><p>Patrick Ness won the children's book category for "The Ask and the Answer," second instalment in the "Chaos Walking" trilogy.</p><img src="http://admatch-syndication.mochila.com/images/ad.gif?aid=67838831&bid=informcom" /></div><div id="copyright"><div>

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