Crispin awarded 2020 Blake Poetry Prize

The Blake Poetry Prize 2020 has been awarded to Judith Nangala Crispin for the poem ‘On Finding Charlotte in the Anthropological Record’.

Crispin, a poet and visual artist of Bpangerang descent, is currently poetry editor of the Canberra Times and is the author of poetry collections The Myrrh-Bearers (Puncher & Wattmann) and The Lumen Seed (Daylight Books).

The judges described Crispin’s winning entry as ‘an important Australian poem, tender, real, conversational’ and one that ‘all Australians should take the time to read’. It was chosen from a shortlist of eight and a total pool of 480 submissions.

‘”Charlotte”, a prose poem about identity, stood out with its form, imagery, importance and its truth,’ said the judges. ‘It is a poem about a meeting across boundaries of space and time, weighted with the erasure of identity and song lines, of a legacy of broken families, racism and discovery.’

Louise Carter’s poem ‘History of Sadness’ was highly commended by the judging panel, which this year included playwright and poet Julie Janson, Charles Sturt University lecturer Lachlan Brown and 2017 Blake Poetry Prize winner Julie Watts.

The Blake Poetry Prize is managed by Casula Arts Powerhouse and Liverpool City Council in collaboration with WestWords. For more information about the biennial prize, and to read the shortlisted poems, see the WestWords website.

Category: Awards Local news