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 the author, most recently, of the poetry collection Inside My Mother (Giramondo Publishing, 2015) and the memoir Too Afraid to Cry (Ilura Press, 2013). More by Ali Cobby Eckermann › Toby Fitch Toby Fitch is Overland’s poetry editor, a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Sydney, and the poet behind Rawshock, Bloomin’ Notions, Where Only the Sky had Hung Before and, most recently, Sydney Spleen. He is the editor of the poetry anthologies Best of Australian Poems 2021 (co-edited with Ellen van Neerven) and Groundswell: The Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize for New & Emerging Poets 2007–2020. 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 First published in Overland Issue 228 27 September 2023 · Sport When the sport circus comes on Country Jenny Fraser The next huckster in the carnival of sport is the upcoming 2032 Brisbane Olympic Games. If we want aspects of it to be in line with Aboriginal protocol, we need action from across the four winds of the world. If it’s not done right we need solidarity and protest just the same. We are each other’s safety net in this theatre of sport. As a senior Aboriginal woman activist once told me, ‘we are all only as good as we negotiate’. First published in Overland Issue 228 25 September 202326 September 2023 · The university Solidarity but only among managers, or the future of the university sector Hannah Forsyth The process continued during Covid. Jobs were being cut due to the threats posed by the pandemic, yet more scholars were being recruited. 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