Newcastle Poetry Prize Shortlist 2023

F O R N E A R L Y forty years the Newcastle Poetry Prize has been the foremost prize for individual poems in Australia. Part of the remit of the prize has been to encourage longform poems—poems of up to two-hundred lines. The shortlist for this year’s prize is released today by the Hunter Writers Centre, who have hosted it from the start.

https://hunterwriterscentre.org/2023/10/10/2023-npp-shortlist/

The prize is judged blind, as John Foulcher and Judith Nangala Crispin remind everyone in their comments below, so they’d have been surprised and delighted to find, once they’d agonised over the final choice (of thirty one poems), that a number of the poems were by well-known names in Australian poetry, but just as many by emerging or less celebrated poets. I know a number of the poets on this list, and I know their work, and I know Judith and John, the two judges, and I respect their discernment and probity—so this will be a lovely anthology. As John and Judith say, many fine poems have not made the list; I know that is true, because I have judged this prize and a number of others. But that also means all the poems that made this cut will be very fine indeed and any of them, really, could make a deserving winner.

I’m glad to share this shortlist with all the poets named in the link below, but because I have worked with them or mentored them or just admired their work, I would especially like to acknowledge Tod Turner, Eileen Chong, Audrey Molloy, Kit Kelen, Joe Dolce, Robyn Rowland, Jake Goetz, Jean Kent, Jennifer Kornberger, Mark O’Flynn, Rachael Mead, Kevin Smith, and Vuong Pham. But above all, look at Jo Gardiner, with three poems on the list, and all of them wonderful. Jo has been writing gorgeous poems for many years, and she’s featured on many shortlists. I feel as if she’s found he fullness and depth of her voice in the last couple of years, in particular, in the longer forms celebrated by this prize. Go, Jo.

My two shortlisted poems are “Fall” and “Lines for Late Winter; or, the Reef Heron.”

Thanks to Judith Nangala Crispin and John Foulcher. I know how demanding this prize is to judge, and how much of a commitment of time and energy and self it demands. The NPP attracts many hundreds of entries, and all of them are long. The caliber of these poets reflects the caliber of your judgment. And to Katherine McLean, the new director of the Hunter Writers Centre, and to everyone at HWC. See you all at the prizegiving on 18 November.