The Mary Gilmore Prize for a First Book of Poetry is awarded to Nathan Shepherdson for Sweeping the Light Back into the Mirror (UQP)

There were many fine poets and poems among the entrants (38 in all) and the judges noted that it was great to see so many talented writers.

The collections were varied: and so were the judges.

The judges were:
Ralph Spaulding, Stephanie Green, and CA Cranston (Chair)
(with Andrew Peek facilitating in the early part of the selection process)

 

The bases on which the judges arrived at their assessment was to look at language resonance, originality, voice, and ambitiousness in terms of form and coherence, at the level of an entire collection rather than just in individual poems. And the judges brought with them their individual quirks.

One judge felt that a secondary consideration, given that this is the Mary Gilmore Award, was insight into female experience, but did not use gender as a selection criteria; another judge favoured classicism in theme and content, and noted the challenge in trying to avoid being entranced by a certain style of writing. Another was interested in engagement with the contemporary, especially the environment: and each judge found plenty to satisfy their individual bent.

Another perspective was to give consideration to ASAL’s current theme, to WHAT on (this globalised) earth it means to be an Australian writer: whether that means writing about village weddings, and lemon trees on returning to Cyprus, as Angela Costi does; or LK Holt, visiting Mumbai; or Angela Gardner just ‘Three hours out from Heathrow’; or the more familiar territory found in the ‘Mallee Sequence’ in Lisa Gorton’s ‘Press Release’ where she traces the Murray River ‘Out of Kosciusko’ ‘through the Mallee plains’.

As such, the judges wish to acknowledge that the short-listed poets were so good, and that it would be so easy to argue convincingly in favour of any of them as winners—indeed several of them are already recipients of poetry prizes; so ASAL members are encouraged to get to know these accomplished writers who are able to present significant ideas and maintain their ‘voice’ so confidently.

The short list included, in alphabetical order:

Judith Bishop, ‘Event’ published by Inbooks

This collection reverberates with meaning, anchored to the earth, the human, and the cycle of existence. Concepts of ascension and descent are central to many poems, often conveyed by references to birds and the wind with birds as acrobats of life and death. There’s also an interesting variety of subjects, which include Bishop’s response to paintings; the ‘Donna Marina’ poems are an exceptional achievement conveying themes of love, wifedom, and motherhood.

Angela Costi, ‘Honey & Salt’ published by Five Islands Press

Costi’s collection is gutsy, full of vital energy, great characters, sense-awareness, and palpable images of a girl growing up in a Greek migrant family. The writing is a colourful reflection of a young woman’s Australian girlhood.

Jan Dean, ‘With One Brush’ published by Interactive Press

Dean’s collection takes up the relation between poetry and painting, a personal ars poetica articulated by the serene voice of a mature, confident, writer. The writer’s exposition of her own painterly life and the knowledge of other painters’ works is convincingly conveyed by dramatic monologue. In separate reports two judges went out on a limb and used the word ‘truth’ to describe a confident intimacy with the reader. There’s completeness about the selection, which is very satisfying.

Also from Interactive Press:

Libby Hart, ‘Fresh news from the Arctic’

The poems here are lyrical, and informed by exquisite images. They attempt to engage with issues like exploration, discovery, place, the past, and what it means to belong, or not. For the most part, the images are strong and lingering.

Angela Gardner, ‘Parts of Speech’ published by UQP

Gardner’s form is taut, and readable, with simple descriptive pieces and humour, as in the classical connections with Hercules’ twelve labours. Gardner enjoys abbreviated forms of verse, but is equally at home in more formal structures; the flexibility of voice is evident in the way the collection explores the nature and uses of language, and the more personal and fundamental acts of communication.

Lisa Gorton, ‘Press Release’ published by Giramondo Poets

Gorton’s voice positions her as ‘Australian woman’ — autochthonous in content and context — appropriately so, in the context of this award. Her subjects — whether graffiti on a wall in Pompeii, or graffiti from a toilet in Federation Square — are clearly enunciated; the language is effectively compressed, in what has elsewhere been called ‘a modern baroque style’; and presentation of landscape and situations is skillfully articulated through a stream of consciousness framework.

Highly Commended works are:

L K Holt, ‘Man Wolf Man’ published by John Leonard Press

Holt’s work is visually literate, conceptually rich, and emotionally chilling at times. Holt is someone who is trying to write poetry in the largest sense and isn’t afraid to dig deep in her treatment of a range of subjects and her command of a variety of verse forms.

Paul Magee, ‘cube root of book’ also published by John Leonard Press

Here, we have the continuing story of human endeavor shown by linking the personal and present with the historical as Magee translates material from Virgil, with classical connections to Ovid, and Horace. It’s a stunning literary and historical landscape – with echoes of canonical texts, literary figures, and descriptions of places in both hemispheres.

Magee interweaves his personal story (divorce, attempted suicide, life in Sydney) with a larger context that is exciting and original in its finding of new ways to use poetry.

And that’s it for the ‘short’ list.

The winning collection, chosen for brilliantly sustained, consistency of performance that is emotionally strong across the entire selection, is ‘Sweeping the Light Back into the Mirror’ by Nathan Shepherdson, and published by UQP.

‘A word is a precious possession’ writes Mary Gilmore in Hound of the Road (1922), ‘To those who know how to hold it to the mind’s eye and turn it to the light, long vistas lie in it, and fields of space and colour’ (p. 110).

Such is the accessibility of this work — which is both elegy and eulogy to the figure we later learn is the speaker’s mother. The success with which Shepherdson expresses grief without sentimentality; the clarity with which complex thoughts are conveyed— as in the subtle changes indicating transitions from direct address to the mother, to writing about her in the third person— all confirm the control with which Shepherdson approaches the ‘precious possessions’ that allow ‘reflection’ in a time of shadow.

Poems are numbered, using the shortened form, the word ‘No.’ as if to indicate poems ‘in denial’ of content, and as if to affirm the notion that words can be inadequate for the inexpressible. Even so, as a sequence the poems work gradually towards an attempt to understand death and human existence. But this is no gloomy work; language sweeps light back into the mirror reflecting luminescent images of what was once material form. The collection closes with the words ‘nunc dimittus’ —not its translation, ‘now lettest thou depart’ —a reference from the Book of St Luke. Latin, the ‘dead’ language, lives through its linguistic descendents, central to the mother tongue of the poet’s craft; just so, the speaker, addressing his dead mother, recognizes her, in a relative’s profile and gestures, musing that ‘one’s blood can repeat the choreography in another’s blood / I suspect in both instances this comes from your mother / her way of sitting, stenciled through both of you as well / … (No. 35).

‘Sweeping the Light Back into the Mirror’ has a kind of obvious emotional coherence, arising from theme and conception, and consistent discipline (it could easily have been otherwise).