Poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy has won the Costa poetry prize for The Bees, her first collection since she became poet laureate in 2009, while poet Matthew Hollis has won the biography prize for his work on the last years of Edward Thomas. Duffy’s collection was described as "joyful" by the judges, who said: "We were thrilled by the poet's musical feeling for language and her spellbinding ability to combine naturalness and formal complexity." Duffy is also on the shortlist for the TS Eliot prize.

Costa biography winner Hollis has won the award for his first work of prose,  exploring Edward Thomas's friendship with Robert Frost and his decision to fight in the first world war. Thomas was killed on Easter Monday 1917. The judges called it "dramatic and engrossing". Hollis’s poetry collection, Ground Water, has previously been shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize for Poetry, the Guardian First Book award and the Forward prize for best first collection.

The Costas have five categories: novel, first novel, biography, poetry, and children’s book. Each winner receives £5,000 and a chance of the £30,000 overall Costa book of the year prize, announced in three weeks' time. The winners were: Novel Pure by Andrew Miller; First novel  Tiny Sunbirds Far Away by Christie Watson; Biography Now All Roads Lead to France: The Last Years of Edward Thomas by Matthew Hollis; Poetry The Bees by Carol Ann Duffy; Children's book Blood Red Road by Moira Young.