After reading many hundreds of poems, and from a shortlist of eight standout poems, the judges of the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize for New and Emerging Poets 2022—Pam Brown, Lachlan Brown and Toby Fitch—have selected these three poems as the winners:   In the winning poem ‘VIRIDITAS / little big scrub poem’ (published in […]

the ratings icons have vanished no one cares yes maybe no mostly no --- how’s it going bin night bin night bang bang bring out the dead --- & the mouse plague – how’s that going in the barren paddocks wheat &endless glare

the money printers showed up hadn’t seen anyone for months maybe everyone was broke by now couldn’t know what kind of system is this our desires battered by empty shelves these are the people who used to laugh at Moscow GUM

don't want to    w a l k any where any more lingering orientalism delivered to your door --- guy does the guy collected guy's collective events gaga does the gaga & yes when i think about it echolalia's not that medical

a dead bee on the bus seat, a bipolar daughter

conjecture if I can’t come up with anything I’ll crawl over and tap out one note

once upon a time

This collection’s sixty poems are subtitled ‘psalms’ and each is numbered. There’s something immediately Scorsese-esque about the subtitle ‘A New York Book of Psalms’ but Angela Gardner’s New York experience is too coolly considered for that association. As her subtitle implies, New York evokes a religiosity: ‘I see moonlight as the promised land.’

‘Wimmera’ is a classical epic poem about the Victorian district in which Homer Rieth lives. Here, though, the poet substitutes human beings for gods and goddesses. The scope and ambition in this grand poem is laudable. Interestingly, Rieth is a long-ago migrant to Australia, and there is a distinctly European philosophical subtext here, as is to be expected in an epic – ‘so what is it then about any place/that fills and empties alike/the world with its life’./p>

Singer-songwriters who write poetry are different from poets. Their poetry is always that much nearer to being sung than read. Songs and poetry aren’t seamless – they’re different genre. The writing of Nick Cave, Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Leonard Cohen, Lou Reed – all trumpeted as ‘poets’ – is not as complicated, as neurotic nor as consciously interested in poetic form as that of most poets.

The book’s title is a homonym for François Villon, the fifteenth-century French poet, thief and vagabond who died at thirty-two and who famously wrote ballads in French criminal slang. His work, once translated into English in the nineteenth century, was frowned upon by those with loftier poetic standards. Clemens makes inventive translations of Villon’s irreverent and often lewd poetry.