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History
The Ballina Region for Refugees Poetry Prize is a collaboration between the Ballina Region for Refugees group and Southern Cross University. The prize celebrates the positive contributions refugees make to our communities, and it acknowledges the circumstances that forced them flee their homelands and request refuge in Australia. The prize was open to writers around Australia, including refugees and asylum seekers detained in Australian detention centres and hotel ‘prisons’.
The prize was inaugurated in 2019.
(Sources include Coolabah, No 29, 2021)
Latest Winners / Recipients
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Year: 2020
winner Can I Hold a Village? i "Can one person hold a village? Bear the message of lineage?", 2021 single work poetry
— Appears in: Coolabah , no. 29 2021; (p. 51-52) -
Year: 2019
winner Lost and Found 2020 single work
— Appears in: Social Alternatives , vol. 38 no. 4 2020; (p. 20)
Works About this Award
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Seeking Asylum—Holding Patterns : The 2020 Ballina Region for Refugees Poetry Prize 2021 single work essay
— Appears in: Coolabah , no. 29 2021; (p. 47-72) 'Poetry provides valuable and insightful ways to explore and record social and political experiences and engagements. The plight of refugees and people seeking asylum in Australia is well known. Community groups such as the Ballina Region for Refugees provide support to refugees and asylum seekers both in Australia and offshore. To help raise awareness and validate the experience of refugees and asylum seekers, the Ballina Region for Refugees runs an annual Poetry Prize. The 2020 Ballina Region for Refugees Poetry Prize theme was Seeking Asylum—Holding Patterns. This article presents the winning and highly commended poems, along with poems by refugee and asylum seeker poets. Poems from both insider witnesses – refugees and asylum seekers – and outsider witnesses – poets who seek to express an empathy with the plight of refugees and asylum seekers – have contributed to this collection. From haunting statements of human dissolution that should strike fear into anyone’s heart, through glimpses of hope, the poems explore the trails of asylum seeking and the dysfunctionality of the aftermath.' (Publication abstract)
