Hong Kong poet Agnes Lam had won the Special Mention award in the 24th Nosside International Poetry Prize, said the Home Affairs Bureau of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government on Thursday.

The bureau congratulated her on her winning the prize, noting that she is the first Chinese winner in this competition.

The Nosside International Poetry Prize is the only global poetry contest for unpublished works, multilingual and multimedia. Entries can be written in any language and submitted in the form of written poetry, video poetry or musical poetry.

Lam's winning entry is English poem Vanilla in the Stars, said the bureau.

Lam, born and raised in Hong Kong, is an Associate Professor of the University of Hong Kong's Center for Applied English Studies. She studied at the University of Singapore and completed a doctoral degree in linguistics in 1984 at the University of Pittsburgh.

She regularly contributes poems and articles to journals and publishes anthologies including Water Wood Pure Splendor and Woman to Woman and Other Poems.

(Xinhua News Agency January 4, 2009)