Rachel Edwards, Island Magazine
Island would like to congratulate the winners of the 2012 annual Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize which was announced at the launch of Island 130: Tasmania Now at Ethos last week.
Sharing the $2000 first prize are David Bunn and Fiona Hile for their poems ‘In dreams let us not use first names’ and ‘Bush Poem with Subtitles’ respectively.
Judge Gig Ryan, poetry editor for The Age announced the winners in Hobart last weekend with Chris Pearce of the Hobart Bookshop who generously sponsor the award.
John Kinsella, Island‘s poetry editor and editor of The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry was also a judge.
Two minor prizes of $500 each were also awarded to A. Frances Johnson for ‘Wig Library, Mornington’ and K. A. Nelson for ‘Two Worlds’.
From the judges’ report:
“Our four final winners, as well as the five Highly Commended poems, all stood out for their often offbeat intelligence, verve, and their linguistic and structural consistency.
Our two First Prize winners reflect the genres that were submitted, both admirably accomplished poems yet utterly different from each other.”
The full report is available at islandmag.com.
The five highly commended poems are ‘Five Sonnets that Look Like the Sea’ by Connor Weightman, ‘Berlin, Jesus-Christus-Kirche’ by Peter King, ‘Public Health’ by Kiran Bacic, ‘Cupid O’ by John Carey and ‘Paterson’s Curse’ by Fiona Hile.
The Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize, now in its 17th year, remembers Tasmania’s most acclaimed poet and is proudly sponsored by the Hobart Bookshop.
