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Gwen Harwood Memorial Poetry Prize
or Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize
Subcategory of Awards Australian Awards
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History

The Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize is sponsored by The Hobart Bookshop. It is open to single poems or linked suites not longer than 80 lines. There is a cash prize and publication with Island, as well as two minor prizes at the judges discretion.

Latest Winners / Recipients

Year: 2024

winner The Burial Feathers Yasmin Smith , 2024 single work poetry
— Appears in: Island , no. 170 2024; (p. 6)

Year: 2022-2023

winner Day 210 i "We meet because someone told us to.", Brigid Coleridge , 2023 single work poetry
— Appears in: Island , no. 167 2023; (p. 4-5)
Author's note: 'Russia-Ukraine War Latest : What We Know On Day 210 Of 'The Invasion' The Guardian, 21 September 2022

Year: 2021-2022

winner Sestina After B. Carlisle i "My dying friend maintains Heaven", Stuart Barnes , 2022 single work poetry
— Appears in: Island , no. 164 2022; (p. 5)

Year: 2020-2021

winner The Memory of Water i "Autonomy's paupers, golden of limb", Amy Crutchfield , 2021 single work poetry
— Appears in: Island , no. 161 2021; (p. 4-5)

Year: 2018

winner On the Day You Launch i "The future of the earth is a series of goodbyes, so you", Damen O'Brien , 2019 single work poetry
— Appears in: Island , no. 156 2019; (p. 14)

Works About this Award

Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize 2023 single work essay
— Appears in: Island , no. 167 2023; (p. 3)

'The judging committee for this year’s Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize comprised Jill Jones, Shastra Deo and myself, Kate Middleton. The process we followed to determine this year’s shortlisted poems, commendation, runners-up and winner took place over many weeks. At the first stage, each of us read the full range of poems submitted to the prize and created our own longlists which we circulated to the other judges. With these longlists combined, we focused on the 25 poems that had struck us as sharing qualities of impressive craft and the ability to surprise. We also were interested in the range of work a poem can do, from narrative propulsion or linguistic metamorphosis to lyric meditation, as well as the forms it can take. In discussing the longlisted poems, we created a shortlist of ten poems (included in this issue). Here we both prized the quality of individual poems as well as the way a shortlist can showcase a real variety of poetries being written in Australia today. We noted with real pleasure the range of work we had to choose from, and the high quality of the poems entered into this year’s prize.' (Introduction)

On Co-Judging the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize Jennifer Livett , 2003 single work column
— Appears in: Island , Winter-Spring no. 93-94 2003; (p. 214-215)
MTC Cronin Wins the 1997 Gwen Harwood Prize 1997 single work column
— Appears in: Five Bells , September vol. 4 no. 8 1997; (p. 11)
Comments on Judging : The 1997 Gwen Harwood Memorial Poetry Prize Angela Rockel , 1997 single work column
— Appears in: Island , Spring/Summer no. 72/73 1997-1998; (p. 24)
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