Wins Poetry Prize

Philip Booth '47, a member of the English Department at Wellesley College, won the 1956 Lamont Poetry Selection in October with "Letter from a Distant Land," a collection of lyric poems. Submitted by the Viking Press in competition with twenty other publishers' choices, Booth's poems were chosen by the Academy of American Poets, Inc., which sponsors the selection. The Academy assures publication by purchasing 1,000 copies of the book for its members. Viking will bring out the book in February.

This is not the first notice that Booth's poetry has received. Last year "Letter from a Distant Land," the long poem addressed to Thoreau from which the collection draws its title, received the Bess Hopkin prize. This honor, coveted by young poets, is awarded by Poetry Magazine.

Philip Booth has been strongly attached to Dartmouth; he was born and grew up in Hanover where his father, Edmund H. Booth '18, is Professor of English. He prepared for college at Vermont Academy and was graduated from Dartmouth in 1947 after service in the Air Force. After receiving his M.A. degree at Columbia in 1949 and a year's experience teaching English at Bowdoin College, he returned to Dartmouth in 1950 as assistant to the Director of Admissions and later was named Instructor in English. He has been at Wellesley since 1955 and lives at Lincoln, Mass.