Final Results of the 2019 Judith Wright Poetry Prize
Established in 2007 and supported by the Malcolm Robertson Foundation, the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize seeks outstanding poetry from new and emerging writers.
This year’s wonderful judges, Ellen van Neerven, Michael Farrell and Toby Fitch (who is also Overland’s poetry editor), read over 750 entries before selecting a shortlist of just nine outstanding works. Ellen, Michael and Toby then chose three exceptional poems to place first, second and third, praising these poems as ‘exemplary’ ‘energetic’ and ‘clever’.
Overland, the judges and the Malcolm Robertson Foundation are thrilled to announce the results of the 2019 Judith Wright Poetry Prize.
First place ($6000)
‘No Alarms’ – Dan Hogan
‘No alarms’ is a poem about going to work under capitalism, the pulverisation of ‘selfhood’ by neoliberal hammers, and being visited by the ghosts of lost futures while chucking a sickie.
Dan Hogan is a writer and public primary school teacher from San Remo currently working on Darug Country. They also run DIY literary organisation Subbed In.
Second place ($2000)
‘No language for white man’ – Lou Garcia-Dolnik
‘No language for white man’ contemplates how peoples, their lands and languages, in their essence resist whiteness.
Lou Garcia-Dolnik is a mixed-race Filipinx writer, editor and harpist working on unceded Gadigal Land. A poetry editor with Voiceworks and alumnus of the Banff’s Centre’s Emerging Writers Intensive, they were recently awarded third place in PRISM International’s Pacific Spirit Poetry Prize.
Third place ($1000)
‘Chinny chin chin’ – Grace Yee
‘Chinny chin chin’ is about border security, exclusion and perpetual ‘otherness’ in white settler Australia.
Grace Yee is currently a Creative Fellow at the State Library of Victoria. She teaches in the writing and literature programs at Deakin University and the University of Melbourne. Her poetry has most recently appeared in Southerly, Stilts, Rabbit, Overland and Meanjin.
You can read the full judges’ report, along with ‘No Alarms’, ‘No language for white man’ and ‘Chinny chin chin’ in Overland #238 – out soon!
Image: Juhasz Imre/Pexels
The Judith Wright Poetry Prize is supported by the Malcolm Robertson Foundation