2011: Jennifer Harrison and Keri Glastonbury

Jennifer Harrison was born in Liverpool, Sydney, in 1955, in a motorbike shop. She completed a medical degree in 1979 and her training as a psychiatrist in 1990. She runs the Developmental Assessment Program for children and adolescents at the Alfred Hospital, Melbourne.

She began writing poetry while living in Boston, USA. Jennifer’s poetry has won many prizes including the 2003 NSW Women Writers National Poetry Prize, the 2004 Martha Richardson Poetry Medal and the 2004 Australian Book Review Poetry Prize. Her poetry has appeared in The Best Australian Poetry 2003, The Best Australian Poems 2004 and will feature in The Best Australian Poetry 2005. Her first collection Michelangelo ’s Prisoners won the 1995 Anne Elder Award and was commended in the Banjo Awards of the same year. Her second collection Cabramatta/Cudmirrah, clear-eyed, celebratory, sharp and elegaic, explores her urban youth and the familiar coast of childhood and family. Dear B was her third collection. She has lived in the United States and New Zealand and has travelled in the Himalayas. She lives with her family in Melbourne where she practises as a psychiatrist. As a poet successive reviewers in Australian Book Review have compared her to Gwen Harwood, Judith Wright and Elizabeth Bishop. As Alan Gould has written, her poems are ‘deeply attentive to the strangeness they have found in the world’.

Black Pepper published Harrison ’s latest collection of poems, Folly & Grief, in 2006. She co-edited (with Kate Waterhouse) Motherlode: Australian Women’s Poetry 1986-2008 (Puncher and Wattmann, 2009). Her forthcoming book, to be published by Black Pepper, will be Columbine; New & Selected Poems.

Keri Glastonbury teaches creative writing at the University of Newcastle and completed a Doctorate in Creative Arts at the University of Technology, Sydney in 2004 (where she previously taught cultural studies and writing). She is a widely published Australian poet and has received numerous grants from the Australia Council, including the BR Whiting Residency (Rome). In 2009 she had an Asialink Literature Residency in India.

Keri is also an editor of the publishing company Local Consumption Publications and is interested in fostering new local writing.

2010:

Open Section: Jill Jones & Anthony Lawrence.

New Media Section: by Rob Walker

Jill Jones

Jill Jones’ won the Kenneth Slessor Poetry prize for Screens Jets Heaven and the Mary Gilmore Award for The Mask and the Jagged Star. She has also been shortlisted for a number of awards. Her most recent book is Dark Bright Doors. She is also co-editor, with Michael Farrell, of Out of the Box: Contemporary Australian Gay and Lesbian Poets. Her work appears in a number of recent anthologies, including The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry, the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature and The Best Australian Poems 2009. She lives in Adelaide.

2009:

Open Section: Philip Salom, VIC (head judge) and Jill Jones, SA.

New Media: Jason Nelson, QLD.

“The Prize has always been judged by senior practitioners of national standing, and is known to be open to quality work irrespective of style or school. It remains Australia’s most widely recognised and deeply respected poetry award.”

Rob Riel, Picaro Press

Judges are selected by the Newcastle Poetry Prize Committee. Three Open Section judges are appointed each year, with a Head Judge undertaking the revision of all poems submitted to arrive at a reduced selection which is then reviewed by the other two judges. A further judge is appointed to judge the new media poems.

To provide continuity in the judging process one of the open section judges ‘carries over’ from one year to the next. A judge also is conventionally drawn from Newcastle and its environs, and care is taken to draw the remaining judges from around Australia, emphasizing the national focus and reputation of the Prize.

In 2007 the judges were Martin Harrison (Head and local judge), Jan Owen (SA) and John Jenkins (VIC). In 2008 Jan Owen will carried over and was Head Judge, and is joined by Philip Salom (VIC) and Richard Tipping as the local judge. The New Media judge in 2008 was Jayne Fenton Keane (QLD). 2009 Judges will be announced shortly.

Great consideration is given to the selection of judges to ensure a represention a range of styles and critical standpoints, so that the Prize is not seen to favour any particular poetry clique. Changing the judges each year also helps to keep the prize fresh and interesting. For these reasons, many poets will enter year in year out, and purchase the anthology irrespective of whether they are in it or not, because they know that the process is reliable and the results outstanding.

At no stage during the judging process are judges aware of the identity of the poets. Poems are identified by a number only, and names are not revealed to the judges until all winning numbers have been forwarded to the Newcastle Poetry Prize Coordinator, and the anthology list submitted.