2008 GWEN HARWOOD POETRY PRIZE
JUDGES’ REPORT by ROBYN ROWLAND AND JOHN FOULCHER
We were surprised this year to read so many poems from country Australia, some focusing on the drought, but many about the ways in which rural Australia has shifted in perspective as older people passed away. There were also some notable poems about the way cities are devouring the countryside.
As always, there were poems that dealt with the ‘stuff of poetry’ – war (mainly about the 2nd World War), love, death, relationships, illness – and sometimes joy! There were also many nature poems, though most of these did not reach the final selection because they were undeveloped in that the focus on a flower or a place did not lead the reader into an extension of meaning to be gained from those observations. Some poems were too didactic – instructing the reader on how to live life or what they should think or feel about a subject. Some dealt in dry abstracts as they pondered rather than demonstrated emotional experience. Many had too many rhetorical questions – a risk in a poem. Strangely, most poets did not make use of the 100 line limit which enables a poem to create strong narrative or a sinewy depth; some were very short.
Sorting a large number of poems is always challenging. Many were clearly not poetry. Often the poems merely told stories or stated the writer’s views about the ‘big’ issues in life. They were not transformed into poetry and needed more work. They were also sometimes very descriptive but with no real intention in them. But we did have a first ‘shortlist’ of about 40 strong poems (from 250 sent in) to consider, and came to our last 25 poems pretty much in synchrony. Many of the poems in this last list were strong contenders and then we had to nick-pit to slowly cut out those that had enough of a flaw in them to help us to arrive at the last six. All of those 25 poems were clearly publishable work.
As judges this year, we were looking for poems that explored an original image or idea, that struck true in feeling, that were well crafted, using either form or image or rhythm to lift the work beyond prose. We felt the poems we were looking for needed to leave the reader changed in some way – emotionally, intellectually or ideally both. We wanted the poem to draw us into the experience rather than tell us about it. We re-read the leading six poems many times and finally read them out loud to each other. The final four are as follows:
The winning poem, Drawing in the Birth Room by Angela Malone (NSW), is a poem that could not be bypassed. There is a deep loveliness in it as it draws the line of a birth into the lines of a life. The poem is simple, unpretentious and without a stumble or jarring word. The idea that the child was drawing before birth, the places and experiences that the mother was living, is woven back into itself, as, three years later, the child draws her watery first landscape. The miracle of life unfolding is shown, not said, and the love that emanates from it is powerful. The poem untangles itself from a simple, prosaic introduction, the lines unfurling towards a lyrical intensity that belies the apparent ordinariness of the experience. Its exuberance overwhelms the reader, and it swells towards the inevitability of its final lines.