Helen Lucas has won the 2020 Queensland Poetry Festival Val Vallis Prize with ‘Heirloom’; Sarah Rice wins second prize with ‘My Time in Govie Housing Draws to a Close’ and Rae White wins the Highest Queensland entry for ‘The last tourist’.
Helen Lucas
The wholesome extended imagery, the craftily woven wordplay and delicate repetition are beautifully sustained and developed. The way the body becomes part of the art of knitting is artfully achieved. The fluent lines are carefully orchestrated as are the tensions between the personal and the public.
Sarah Rice
This poem nests hearty moments inside masterful imagery and carefully placed word play, leaking magic into the mundane. The poem filters its moods well across its lines. The convincing voice surveys the tensions created by loss and paints a memorable portrait of place and character.
Rae White
This poem’s vernacular immediacy, imagistic freshness and perspectives give it an immediate appeal. Tone and voice are used both humorously and incisively to create memorable portraits that reflect both animal and human foibles in an energetic way.
Kirli Saunders is a proud Gunai woman. She is the Manager of Poetic Learning and Cultural Liaison at Red Room Poetry. Kirli founded the Poetry in First Languages project. She is the author of The Incredible Freedom Machines (2018), Our Dreaming (2019) and Happy Ever After (2020). Her poetry collection, Mother, Earth Child, Lover is to be released by Magabala Books in 2019. Kirli was Runner Up in the Nakata Brophy Prize, 2017 and was Highly Commended in Black&Write! 2018. She has been published by Red Room Poetry, Cordite and Overland. In 2018, Kirli will be writer in residence at Bundanon Trust, Q Station and Fremantle Writers Centre.
Judith Beveridge is the author of seven collections of poetry, most recently Sun Music: New and Selected Poems which won the 2019 Prime Minister’s poetry prize. She has also been awarded the Christopher Brennan and Philip Hodgins Memorial Medals for excellence in Literature. She was poetry editor for Meanjin from 2005-2016. Her work has been studied in schools and universities and has been translated into several languages.
http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/beveridge-judith
