After reading over six hundred entries, and from a shortlist of eight outstanding poems, the judges of the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize for New and Emerging Poets 2023 — Elena Gomez, Andy Jackson, Autumn Royal and Toby Fitch — have selected three winners.

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‘In Blakwork, Alison Whittaker literally and figuratively demonstrates the subtle – yet radical – ways in which poetry may influence perceptions, particularly with regards to the colonial romanticisation of so-called Australia. One of the ways she powerfully does this is by mimicking Dorothea Mackellar’s use of rhyme, and reveals how it creates nostalgia = settler ownership/entitlement = systematic racism.’ New work by Alison Whittaker, Lindsay Tuggle, Michael Farrell and George Mouratidis reviewed by Autumn Royal

Anupama Pilbrow’s debut collection opens with ‘The Body Poem’, which details a forbidden affair between a lover and ‘the body’. The lover is enamoured by ‘the body’, the lover accepts ‘the body’ and even appreciates ‘the sound it makes like / jangling keys’. The subject of the poem is never degraded, used or objectified. Pilbrow instead wraps ‘the body’ in a protective ‘gauze’ (instead of gaze?) which ‘sways in the breeze’.

It would be limited/limiting to state that Shah Idil’s poetry explores impacts of colonisation, migration, Islamaphobia and transgenerational trauma – this collection is filled with hope, tenderness and ‘reminders’. As Shah Idil writes in the poem ‘Reminder’: ‘Hold out your memories / in your palms without shame. / They are all we have / and they matter.’ Jill Jones, Aisyah Shah Idil, Fiona Hile and Jeanine Leane reviewed.