“Lines for Late Winter; or The Reef Heron” wins second prize in this year’s Newcastle Poetry Prize

I W A S T H R I L L E D to see Kevin Smith take out this year’s Newcastle Poetry Prize with his deeply felt poem “The Crossing.” It’s a tender and a well crafted lyric poem.

I was equally delighted to see my poem take second place. “Lines for Late Winter,” written on the day we interred my mother’s ashes, begins as a riff on Mark Strand’s “Lines for Winter” and continues, thinking of the shores I found myself stumbling along in my ageing body, that day late in winter, Strand’s notes of stubborn gladness and determination to carry on and do some good even in the face of impossible odds. Halfway in a reef heron turned up to help me finish the poem, and there is no way that was not my mother.

And like the sheoaks, you will inhabit your life

Inordinately,

The way a forest inhabits a tree,

The sky, a bird, the whole world, a moment,

The ocean, a shore.

And your life will be your own life

Utterly, your soul a perfect fit

For your days,

And so it always will have been.

—from “Lines for Late Winter”

Lovely to share the majors, too, with Jo Gardiner, her poem wise and beautiful poem “A Country Childhood.” Both Kevin and Jo have studied with me. Both took my poetry masterclass, and I saw both of them find new levels in their poetry in mentorships they undertook with me. It should be noted that Jo had three poems longlisted (and Kevin, two). Congrats, too, to Todd Turner and Dzenana Vucic, whose poems were highly commended, and rightly so. Jake Goetz won the Harri Jones for the best poem by a poet under thirty-six. Jean Kent and Kit Kelen won the local prizes. Fine poems all.

The anthology, named for Kevin’s poem, includes all the longlisted poems, and there is lovely work there by many of our finest poets: Audrey Molloy, S J Finn, Robyn Rowland, Joe Dolce, Rachael Mead, Paul Hetherington, Jennifer Kornberger among them, and some emerging poets like Vuong Pham and Jo Ward.

And it’s worth getting for what two fine judges, Judith Nangala Crispin and John Foulcher, have to say about what makes a fine poem fine, how little overt political declamation has to do with that, and how little AI knows yet about what it is that poetry knows and how it speaks.

(Thanks to the University of Newcastle for their ongoing sponsorship of the prize, to the board of the Hunter Writers Centre, and to the HWC’s new director Katherine McLean.

https://hunterwriterscentre.org/2023-newcastle-poetry-prize/