Published in Overland Issue 230 Autumn 2018 · Uncategorized Judith Wright Poetry Prize: Judges’ notes Ali Cobby Eckermann and Toby Fitch Ali Cobby Eckermann Judging this year’s Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize was an exciting privilege. We received a very high number of submissions, suggesting poetry, both in its creation and value, is held in high regard in Australia. In the true style of Judith Wright, there soon emerged poems about the environmental gaze cast over land, heartfelt rebellions of courage, and history, as it is understood by individual rapture. As an Australian poet I felt pleasantly relieved and rewarded by the high poetic quality of submissions. At a glance it was obvious the strongest voice belonged to a much younger voice than mine – a delightful hope for the future of Australian poetry! Obviously, judging is an extremely difficult task, and this competition saw Toby and I chatting long into the nights to decipher both a longlist and shortlist, and to select the eventual winners. As all entries are judged blind, it was entirely surprising and delightful to learn the identity of the winners. A rousing congratulations to Evelyn Araluen and Rae White for the outstanding achievement. Toby Fitch Settling on a shortlist, let alone a winner, from nearly 1000 poems is an unsettling task. Devoid of author names, bios and achievements, the usual context for reading a poem is stripped back to the poem alone. This is liberating too, of course, even as it takes time for poems and voices to emerge from the screaming morass of submissions and the anxiety of decision-making. Ali and I started our reading for the prize in December, taking until the end of January to narrow our list down to twenty-one distinctive poems. Over the next couple of weeks we compared our desires for poems that combine content and form, politics and play, music and feeling, and we came up with a shortlist that reflected a broad range of voices and poetics. These were poems that perhaps took longer than other flashier ones to gain our attention, but were poems that would eventually not let themselves be forgotten. Ultimately, three poems had to be singled out for the ‘podium’, and yet all three could have won. Third-placed ‘Dropbear poetics’, a uniquely powerful poem by Evelyn Araluen, is a violent yet droll surprise attack on ‘Australian’ poetry of land, and white appropriation of Aboriginal culture. Second-placed ‘what even r u?’, by Rae White, is insistent in its breaking down of binaries (gendered in particular but also linguistic, via puns and inversions) while expressing admirable patience in the face of intolerance and abuse. ‘Guarded by birds’, also by Evelyn Araluen and the poem to place first this year, crept up on both Ali and I – it is an outstanding evocation of grief caused by suicide and a deeply felt exploration of Indigenous ceremony. Its final lines are subtle, tenuous, open – and a letting go. Congratulations to the winning, shortlisted, and commended poets! It was an honour to judge the prize this year with Ali Cobby Eckermann. We hope you enjoy reading the three winning poems published here. Read the rest of Overland 230 If you enjoyed this piece, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four outstanding issues for a year Ali Cobby Eckermann Ali Cobby Eckermann is a Yankunytjatjara poet and artist from South Australia whose work has been published and celebrated around the world. Her poetry collections include little bit long time and the award-winning collection Inside My Mother. Her verse novels are His Father’s Eyes and Ruby Moonlight, which won the inaugural black&write! Indigenous fellowship, the Kenneth Slessor Prize, a Deadly Award and was named the NSW Premier’s Literary Award Book of the Year. In 2013 Ali toured Ireland as Australia’s Poetry Ambassador, and in 2017 she received the Windham-Campbell Prize from Yale University.She describes herself as a dreamer, a gardener, with deep respect for her journey thus far. More by Ali Cobby Eckermann › Toby Fitch Toby Fitch, living on unceded Gadigal land, is poetry editor of Overland, a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Sydney, and the author of eight books of poetry, including Sydney Spleen and Where Only the Sky had Hung Before. More by Toby Fitch › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays 4 December 20244 December 2024 · Reviews From the loom to the street: AGSA’s Radical Textiles Ben Brooker What strikes you as you wander through the galleries is not only the overtly political messaging of many of the works on display, but also the way that textile and fabric art makes visible the slow, quietly defiant labour of its creation, and gives form to the idea of solidarity across individuals and groups as a kind of weaving together. 2 December 2024 · Reviews Pleasure politics: Zahra Stardust’s Indie Porn Samantha Floreani By drawing out the cultures of indie porn, Stardust pushes readers to see beyond issues of content classification, aesthetics and representation to consider the political economy of pornography. She positions pornography within broader systems of economic inequality, trade relationships and globalisation, and frames indie porn in terms of its efforts to “redistribute power, labour, and wealth in global media production.”
