Disney wins 2023 Porter Prize

Seoul-based Australian poet Dan Disney has won the Australian Book Review‘s (ABR) 2023 Peter Porter Poetry Prize for his poem ‘periferal, fantasmal’.

Judges Sarah Holland-Batt, Des Cowley and James Jiang described Disney’s winning poem, which ‘excavates the colonial history sedimented in the names that litter the landscape of the Gippsland region in Victoria’ as ‘a tour de force of linguistic estrangements’.

Disney receives $6000 while the remaining four shortlisted poets—Chris Andrews (NSW), Chris Arnold (WA), Michelle Cahill (NSW) and Raisa Tolchinsky (USA)—each receive $1000. The shortlisted poems were selected from over 1000 entries sent from 34 countries. Each shortlisted poem will be published in the January–February issue of ABR.

Disney has previously shortlisted for the Porter Prize three times. The poet’s most recent collection of poems, accelerations & inertias, (Vagabond Press), was shortlisted for the Judith Wright Calanthe Award and received the Kenneth Slessor Prize.

The winner of last year’s prize was Anthony Lawrence. For more information, see the ABR website.

Image credit: Im Hyejin/Yivadi Studio.

Category: Awards Local news