AustLit
History
The Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize for New and Emerging Poets was established in 2007 to foster poetry by writers who have not yet published a book of poems under their own name.
It is named in honour of Judith Wright, one of Australia's best-loved poets.
The prize is supported by the Malcolm Robertson Foundation, and is the richest and most prestigious prize for emerging poets in Australia.
Source: http://overland.org.au/prizes/ Sighted: 29/11/2013.
Latest Winners / Recipients
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Year: 2020
winner Border Control : Meditations i "Were you born on a Thursday in Cleopatra", 2021 single work poetry
— Appears in: Overland , Autumn no. 242 2021; (p. 57-58) -
Year: 2019
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Year: 2018
winner Acacia Land i "Can you see this picture - in Ngiyampaa and Gamilaraay country?", 2019 single work poetry
— Appears in: Overland , Autumn no. 234 2019; (p. 24-26) -
Year: 2017
winner Guarded by Birds i "When you go", 2018 single work poetry
— Appears in: Overland , Autumn no. 230 2018; (p. 27-28) -
Year: 2016
joint winner Many Girls White Linen i "no mist no mystery", 2017 single work poetry
— Appears in: Overland , Autumn no. 226 2017; (p. 29-30) Fire Front : First Nations Poetry and Power Today 2020; (p. 55-56) Judges Report : In Alison Whittaker’s ‘MANY GIRLS WHITE LINEN’, which placed equal first, the plight of First Nations peoples is front and centre. Through its torsional rhymes and rhythms, the poem eviscerates the iconic whiteness of Picnic at Hanging Rock and stuns with its own iconic imagery: ‘amongst gums collecting grit / where blak girls hang / nails’. The poem is, to quote Whittaker, ‘raw rousing horrifying’.joint winner OK Cupid i "A man who ‘writes’ messages me on OkCupid saying he won’t read other authors,", 2017 single work poetry
— Appears in: Overland , Autumn no. 226 2017; (p. 31) Judges Report : Holly Isemonger’s ‘OK cupid’, the other equal first-place prizewinner, is a dark, post-digital love poem in which the words of three stanzas are recombined to tell a warped tale about the split-second decisions one makes in the world of online dating. The poem could be seen as a nocturne: the words rotate almost musically, but the recombinations also deconstruct the events within the poem. ‘OK cupid’ shows how repetition is really, in Gertrude Stein’s sense, insistence.
Works About this Award
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Judges’ Report 2017 single work column
— Appears in: Overland , Autumn no. 226 2017; (p. 28)'It has been a pleasure and an honour to judge the 2016 Judith Wright Prize for Emerging Poets. While reading the entries, we kept in mind Wright’s words on the central cultural role poetry plays:
I think poetry should be treated, not as a lofty art separated from life, but as a way of seeing and expressing not just the personal view, but the whole context of the writer’s times.
(Introduction)
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2015 Judith Wright Poetry Prize Shortlist 2016 single work column
— Appears in: Overland [Online] , February 2016; -
The 2015 Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize 2016 single work essay
— Appears in: Overland , Autumn no. 222 2016; (p. 23-24)Writing in June 1971 to the classical scholar and poet Martin Robertson, Judith Wright fondly remarked on a young man who was caretaking ‘Calanthe’, her forest home:
Now I am here again, and sharing the house with one of Meredith’s friends, a delightful young man who is reading his way onwards through all my books, hasn’t a penny and is technically on the run from the police, being a draft resister. [...] He has a very good mind, the kind that turns things over and comes up with the other side of them unexpectedly two days later as though the conversation was still going on. (Introduction)
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Graceful Asymmetries : Judge’s Report for the 2014 Judith Wright Poetry Prize 2015 single work essay
— Appears in: Overland , Autumn no. 218 2015; (p. 82-83) -
Announcing the Winners of the 2014 Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize 2015 single work column
— Appears in: Overland [Online] , March 2015;
