Helen Anne Bell Poetry Bequest Award shortlist announced

The University of Sydney’s faculty of arts and social sciences has announced the shortlist for the Helen Anne Bell Poetry Bequest Award for 2023.

The Helen Anne Bell Poetry Bequest Award is presented to a female poet for a collection of poems that reflects Australian culture, including a cash prize of $40,000 and publication with Vagabond Press. This year is the fifth presentation of the biennial award.

This year’s shortlist includes:

• ‘All Rage Blaze Light’ (Anna Jacobson)
• ‘Doghouse’ (Holly Friedlander Liddicoat)
• ‘If Movement Were a Language’ (Svetlana Sterlin)
• ‘Slippage’ (Angela Gardner).

Judges for the 2023 award include Cassandra Atherton, Jeanine Leane and Maxine Beneba Clarke. The panel said that submissions for the prize this year reflected recurring themes of ‘mental health, the environment, intergenerational family relationships and the natural world’.

The 2021 winner was Emily Stewart, for her manuscript ‘Running Time’, which was subsequently published by Vagabond Press in early 2022.

This year’s winner will be announced at a ceremony tonight, 21 March.

Category: Awards Local news News