Wattison wins $10k ACU Poetry Prize

Meredith Wattison has won the $10,000 Australian Catholic University (ACU) Prize for Poetry.

Based in the Macarthur Region of NSW, Wattison won first prize for ‘The Loose Wild Grace Of It’, her response to the 2022 prize theme of ‘Hope’. Wattison is the author of seven books and the winner of the 2017 Gwen Harwood Prize. In 2022 she was shortlisted for the Blake Poetry Prize.

‘The Loose Wild Grace Of It’ explores five experiences Wattison processed during the pandemic, including the day she was told she would be a grandmother, and her ‘reaction to the shock of a friend’s suicide’.

ACU Poetry Prize judge Robert Carver described Wattison’s winning entry as ‘a complex, learned poem which is also playful, but it’s playing with some of the most painful things imaginable’.

Sunshine Coast–based Kevin Smith took out second place ($5000) for ‘Roofer’, third place ($3000) went to Mark Tredinnick of Bowra for ‘Cubist Landscape’, and Maurice Whelan (Sydney), Loris Gooch (Sydney) and Vanessa Page (Gold Coast) were each awarded $1000 for their highly commended entries.

The winning poem was chosen from over 500 entries and a shortlist of 94, all of which are published in Hope, an anthology that can be purchased from the ACU website.

The ACU Prize for Poetry is sponsored by the Office of the Vice-President of ACU. Last year’s winner was Anna Murchison for her poem ‘Child of Gath-hepher’. For more information about the prize see the ACU website.

Category: Awards Local news