AustLit logo

AustLit

Helen Anne Bell Poetry Bequest
or Helen Bell Bequest ; or Helen Anne Bell Poetry Award
Subcategory of Awards Australian Awards
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

History

The Helen Anne Bell Poetry Bequest Awards were established under the terms of Helen Anne Bell's will.

The Award is presented by University of Sydney's Department of English every two years, with a $7000 cash prize and publication with Vagabond Press. The Award is given to an Australian woman poet for a collection of previously unpublished poems.

Latest Winners / Recipients

Year: 2023

winner Svetlana Sterlin for 'If Movement Were a Language'.

Year: 2021

winner y separately published work icon Running Time Emily Stewart , Newtown : Vagabond Press , 2022 23670467 2022 selected work poetry

'A fine-tuned book-length assemblage of dispersed ‘cerebral offcuts’, virtuosically inventing ‘the shape of a mood’. Nimble and light, precise and seemingly casual: ‘following some line’ of ‘live consciousness’, ‘inner in outer’, ‘what’s around’. Amid doubt, shame, need and fear, there is courage and insouciance, the subtle pleasure of stretching meaning into a variety of imaginative spaces that open up the limits of conventional language and syntax. Condensed, sharp pops of resonant fragments create their own fresh textures and juxtapositions.

'The Helen Anne Bell Poetry Bequest Award 2021 judges (Kate Lilley, Pam Brown and Melinda Bufton) praised Running Time as 'nimble and light, precise and seemingly casual ... Amid doubt, shame, need and fear, there is courage and insouciance, the subtle pleasure of stretching meaning into a variety of imaginative spaces that open up the limits of conventional language and syntax.' (Publication summary)

Emily Stewart

Year: 2019

winner y separately published work icon Moxie Melinda Bufton , Sydney : Vagabond Press , 2020 18541714 2020 selected work poetry

'Moxie traverses the office landscape of our collective psyche, restlessly moving between the interior monologue of daily ruminations and epic-like career narratives lying in wait. The hustle gives way to survival, cresting back into gritty victories via the feminist acquisition of corporate language. Open-plan everything, filing cabinets bursting; the promise of the ladder, beckoning you in.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

for unpublished manuscript 'Moxie'.

Year: 2017

winner y separately published work icon Subtraction Fiona Hile , St Lucia : Hunter Publishers , 2016 9101653 2016 selected work poetry

Year: 2013

inaugural winner y separately published work icon Too Close for Comfort Pip Smith , Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2013 6567030 2013 selected work poetry
X