The Nobel Prize is the mother of all prizes. If you win one of those, you know you've pretty much won at life (to a degree at least. Mother Teresa won one in '79 and we all know she was a right miserable old debs). Anyway, singer-songwriter and all-round icon Bob Dylan was today named the surprise winner of a Nobel Prize in literature for "having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition". Deservedly too: have you ever heard a more beautiful line than "Buckets of rain / Buckets of tears / Got all them buckets coming out of my ears"? Nah, didn't think so.In an announcement, the secretary of the Swedish Academy Sara Danius (the prize was awarded in Stockholm) said: "Of course he deserves it – he's got it," she then added: "He's a great poet – a great poet in the English-speaking tradition. For 54 years he's been at it, reinventing himself constantly, creating a new identity." She then went on to compare the musician to ancient Greek literary greats. "But if you look far back… you discover Homer and Sappho. They wrote poetic texts which were meant to be performed, and it's the same way for Bob Dylan. We still read Homer and Sappho, and we enjoy it. We can and should read him." So yeah – well done, Bob. May your songs be studied by the children of the future.Follow Noisey on Twitter.
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