Biography of poet John Donne wins UK nonfiction book prize

LONDON >> A book that argues Elizabethan poet John Donne should rank alongside William Shakespeare as a literary genius has won Britain’s leading nonfiction book award

British writer Katherine Rundell’s biography “Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne” was named winner of the 50,000 pound ($59,000) Baillie Gifford Prize at a ceremony in London on Thursday night.

Rundell said she will give her prize money away to a refugee group and a climate-change charity — inspired by Donne’s most famous lines: “No man is an island ... any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.”

“There are people who could make better use of that money than I could,” Rundell told The Associated Press on Friday.

Rundell said Donne — who over the years was a seafarer, a legal scholar, a lawmaker and a priest — “burst out of the confines” of the poetic traditions of his time to speak about the pain and wonder of life.