The winner of the 2015 Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence
of Poems, run by International Writers' Workshop NZ Inc, has been
announced with the $1000 prize awarded to Maris
O’Rourke of Mt Eden for her small but perfectly formed sequence, Motherings.
Maris is a former international education consultant
who reinvented herself as a writer in 2008. She had her first poetry collection
Singing with Both Throats published
in 2013 and has three picture books published in her Lillibutt series with illustrations by Claudia Pond Eyley. She is
currently studying for a Masters of Creative Writing at AUT. She can be
contacted for interviews by email to morourke@hotmail.co.nz.
Rosetta
Allan of Auckland, author and poet and previous winner of the Kathleen
Grattan Prize, was the judge this year. She describes the winning sequence as,
“Tales of connection and love that
successfully avoid the abstraction of the language of love.” She adds, “I was in awe from the get-go of
the gentle consistency, and immediacy of the imagery that went straight for the
heart.”
Sue Wootton of Dunedin was Highly Commended for Typewriter Songs.
Gay Johnson was awarded the inaugural Emerging Poet Award for The Sound of Bells or Trumpets.
This award is for an IWW member of at least three years who has not had poetry
published previously. Gay’s prize is an in-depth critique of her sequence.
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 7th year the prize has been
contested. Previous winners are:
2014: Julie
Ryan for On Visiting Old
Ladies.
2013: Belinda
Diepenheim for Bittercress and
Flax.
2012: James
Norcliffe for What do you call your
male parent?
2011: Jillian
Sullivan for how to live it
2010: Janet
Charman for Mother won't come to us,
and Rosetta Allan for Capricious Memory.
2009: Alice
Hooton for America.
International Writers' Workshop NZ Inc (IWW) was founded in 1976 by Barbara B Whyte, a noted poet and writer of
her time. The group meets twice a month
from February to November in Northcote. IWW's main aim is to inspire writers by
means of workshops and competitions across fiction, nonfiction and poetry.
For further information about the Prize, contact
Carolyn Smith Masefield, President, International Writers' Workshop NZ Inc, www.iww.co.nz, email iww-writers@outlook.com, phone (09) 629 3735.
Photo Caption: Rosetta Allan, judge, and Maris
O’Rourke, winner of the 2015 Kathleen
Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems.
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