Permaculture News

The 2018 Venie Holmgren Environmental Poetry Prize

We are thrilled to announce the launch of the 2018 Venie Holmgren Environmental Poetry Prize. The specifics are as follows:

Major prize: AUD$1000

All entries must be received by 11.59 pm EST, Friday July 20 2018.
The shortlist and winner will be announced during the Daylesford Words in Winter festival, August 17 – 26, 2018.
The judges for the 2018 competition are Jessica Wilkinson and Stuart Cooke.

Entry terms and conditions

1. Entrants must be citizens of Australia or New Zealand or have permanent resident status in Australia or New Zealand.
2. Poems must be unpublished (including online) and not under consideration by other publishers.
3. Poems that have won or are under consideration in other competitions are not eligible.
4. Poems must have an environmental theme.
5. All poems must be written in English.
6. The winning poems will be published on www.holmgren.com.au
7. An entry fee of $10 will be charged and is payable via bank transfer, PayPal, cash or cheque. A receipt will be sent as confirmation once the money has been received.
8. The name of the poet must not appear on the manuscript (including the header or footer) since all poems will be considered anonymously.
9. Poems must be no more than 80 lines.
10. Multiple entries are permitted, though a $10 fee applies to each poem.
11. Please ensure you are satisfied with your poem before submitting. Poems that are withdrawn and subsequently resubmitted will incur a second fee.
12. The competition closes 11.59 pm EST, Friday July 20, 2018.
13. Selection will be made by the judges. The judges’ decision is final. No correspondence will be entered into.


About the judges

Jessica Wilkinson is the founding editor of Rabbit: a journal for nonfiction poetry. She has published two poetic biographies, marionette: a biography of miss marion davies (Vagabond 2012) and Suite for Percy Grainger (Vagabond 2014). She is currently writing up a third, on choreographer George Balanchine. She co-edited with Bonny Cassidy the Contemporary Australian Feminist Poetry (Hunter Publishers, 2016). She is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at RMIT University, Melbourne.
Stuart Cooke is a poet, critic and translator who lives on the Gold Coast, where he lectures in creative writing and literary studies at Griffith University. His books include the poetry collections Opera (2016) and Edge Music (2011), a critical work, Speaking the Earth’s Languages: a theory for Australian-Chilean postcolonial poetics (2013), and a translation of an Aboriginal song cycle from the West Kimberley, George Dyuŋgayan’s Bulu Line (2014). He is the winner of the Gwen Harwood, Dorothy Porter and New Shoots Poetry Prizes, and has held residential fellowships at Omi International Arts Centre (USA), Hawthornden Castle (UK) and the Centre for Art and Nature at Farrera (Spain), among others.


About Venievenie

In her late 50’s Venie Holmgren began to write poetry and her first published anthology, The Sun Collection for the Planet in 1989, became a poetry ‘best seller’. At the same time, she applied her environmental activist skills and commitment to the campaign to save native forests near her home on the far south coast of NSW, where she was arrested twice for obstructing log trucks. After 16 years of solo self-reliant living she moved to the local town of Pambula where she penned her travel memoir, several more books of poetry and travelled widely as a performance poet. In 2010 Venie moved to Hepburn where she wrote her last poetry collection, The Tea-house Poems. In January 2016, Venie ‘caught the bus’ at the age of 93 .
You can read more of Venie’s life here:
www.theguardian.com/books/australia-books-blog/2015/mar/25/in-praise-of-venie-holmgren-at-92-still-an-activist-adventurer-and-a-poet


Comments

5 thoughts on “The 2018 Venie Holmgren Environmental Poetry Prize”

  1. Thanks to Venie, (whom I met during a Permaculture Design course facilitated by Hugh Gravestine in Pambula), I will be putting a bathtub at the front entrance of my tiny house on ground. I cant remember why, (on what sustainability grounds- solar orientation?), but Ive never forgotten it. That plus venting the pantry with cool-air updraught from below the floor. Thanks Venie! RIP.

  2. Hi. I can’t seem to upload a poem. Does it have to be a specific file type? I’ve tried pdf and doc and docx. Thank you for your time.

    1. Hi Rada, I have just tested the upload function and it’s working fine here. Pls feel free to email your poem to [email protected] along with all the details from the submission form. Many thanks, Meg

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