The
winner
of the 2016 Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems, run
by International Writers’ Workshop NZ Inc (IWW), has been announced with the
$1000 prize awarded to Michael Giacon of Auckland for his sequence, Argento
in no man land.
Giacon was born and raised in
Ponsonby. He is from a large Pakeha-Italian-Samoan family, and has worked at
tertiary level in English language teaching for quite some time. In 2016
he graduated with an AUT Masters in Creative Writing, producing a volume of
poetry, Beyond Retrieve, which was all about a life of
writing. Argento in no man land began as part of his Masters. A series
of IWW poetry workshops helped him select and shape his winning sequence of 13
poems telling of spring-to-spring romance, love, lust, break-up, some sadness,
hope, for Argento Q in the gay milieu.
This
year’s judge, Gus Simonovic, said of
the winning sequence: “This seduces on the first
read with its feel of ‘ease’. You know when you read one of those poems that
have just ‘landed’ as they are; the ones that look and sound as if they come
directly from that eternal creative source; and where the poet is just the
medium between the source and the reader. The structure of the poem is
‘predictable’, but the content itself is everything but. Its natural flow and
the richness of the emotional landscape makes it readable and re-readable with
endless incarnations of poetic surprise(s).”
The
Emerging Poet Award, presented to an IWW member of at
least three years standing who has not had poetry published previously, is Caroline Carlyle for her sequence The
Chongololo Therapy Sessions. A chongololo is a giant African millipede and
the seven poem sequence relates to her childhood growing up in Zimbabwe.
About
the Prize
The Kathleen Grattan Prize for a
Sequence of Poems has been made possible by a bequest from the Jocelyn
Grattan Charitable Trust. It was a specific request of the late Jocelyn Grattan
that her mother be recognised through an annual competition in recognition of
her love for poetry and that the competition be for a sequence or cycle of
poems with no limit on the length of the poems. It is one of two poetry
competitions funded by the Trust, the other being the prestigious Kathleen
Grattan Award run by the publishers of Landfall magazine.
This is the 8th year the
prize has been contested. Previous winners are:
2009:
Alice Hooton for America.
2010: Janet Charman for Mother
won't come to us, and Rosetta Allan for Capricious Memory.
2011: Jillian Sullivan for how
to live it
2012:
James Norcliffe for What do you call your male parent?
2013:
Belinda Diepenheim for Bittercress and Flax.
2014:
Julie Ryan for On Visiting Old Ladies.
2015: Maris O’Rourke for Motherings
About IWW
International Writers' Workshop NZ Inc
was founded in 1976 by poet Barbara B Whyte and meets twice a month from
February to November at the Northcote Point Senior Citizens Villa in Northcote.
IWW's main aim is to inspire writers by means of workshops and competitions
across fiction, nonfiction and poetry.
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2016 is IWW’s 40th anniversary year
and has culminated with the launch of Those
be Rubies, a comprehensive and meticulously researched history from
the workshop’s conception to the end of 2016 including these results of The Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence
of Poems. More about the book at iww.co.nz/book.htm.
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Michael Giacon can be contacted by
email at mlag@xtra.co.nz or on 021 213
6685.
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