Mayne, Mansour receive $50k Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarships
Poets Chloe Mayne and Sara Mansour are among the seven recipients of the 2024 Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarships, each worth $50,000.
Mayne is a poet and a current creative doctoral candidate studying motherhood, decoloniality and ecology. She is a descendant of the Trawlwoolway people of north-eastern Tasmania. Her scholarship will focus on writing her first full-length poetry collection, involving research and residencies in Rodrigues (Mauritius) and Ireland, exploring her maternal lineage and Tasmanian identity.
She said: ‘The Marten Bequest opens up my poetic horizons in profound ways, offering an opportunity to physically trace the veins of my motherline across three far-flung islands. Being the mother of a young child, I can only emphasise how meaningful the gift of spaciousness provided by the bequest is for my poetry, both now and into the future.’
Mansour is a poet and lawyer who has also led the Bankstown Poetry Slam for over a decade. Her work reflects her journey from internalised shame to pride in her heritage and identity. Her scholarship will allow her to focus on her first poetry collection, exploring themes of home and womanhood. She plans to travel to Lebanon, the UK, and the US for mentorship, residencies, and performance opportunities.
She said: ‘I feel so honoured that other people also believe in my work and my vision. It is also humbling to be following in the footsteps of previous recipients and poets I admire, like Candy Royalle, Sarah Holland-Batt and Judith Bishop. Receiving this scholarship represents so many opportunities that otherwise would have been financially inaccessible to me: mentorship, research, travel and ultimately, the development of my first book of poetry, which I have been dreaming about for over a decade.’
The scholarships are administered by Creative Australia on behalf of Perpetual Philanthropic Services as trustee and were established by John Chisholm Marten, a lifelong patron of the arts and literature, to develop the creative practice of young artists through travel. They offer ‘talented young artists (aged 21–35 at the closing date) the chance to explore, study and develop their artistic gifts through travelling interstate and/or overseas’.
More information about the scholarships (as well as the full list of recipients) is available on the Creative Australia website.
Category: Awards Local news
