Listen Share Learn WRITE

2022 SCWC Poetry Commissions

The South Coast Writers Centre is excited to announce that Elanna Herbert and Nicole Smede have been commissioned to write poems responding to the stories and memories shared at the Listen Share Learn afternoon teas events (produced by the Shoalhaven Health and Arts (SHAA) and Bomaderry Community Inc). The poems will be included in the SCWC's 2022 Anthology of Writing and the poems will be read at a launch event in Nowra in December.

Elanna Herbert

Elanna holds a Communication PhD (UC). While Elanna’s primary focus is on poetry, she also writes short fiction and narrative non-fiction. Her short story collection Frieda and the Cops (Ginninderra Press, 2005) was Runner up ACT Writing and Publishing Awards, and won the 2001 Marion Eldridge Award. In 2021 she shortlisted for ACU’s Prize for Poetry, and the Queensland Poetry Awards Emerging Older Poets mentorship. In 2020 she won the June Shenfield National Poetry prize and was awarded a Varuna ‘Writing Fire Writing Drought’ Fellowship. She was shortlisted for the Booranga Prize and Storyfest, and was a winner of the SCWC ‘Writing in Colour’ poetry competition, the Ethel Webb Blundell Literary Award. Elanna’s work appears in Science Write Now, Westerly, Axon, Not Very Quiet, Meniscus, StylusLit, Australian Poetry Anthology, Four W, Poetry New Zealand and anthologies Brushstrokes II, Grieve and Never Heard of Them, among others.

Nicole Smede

Nicole is a multi-disciplinary artist of Worimi and European descent, living and creating on Wodi Wodi Country. Proud of her heritage, she works through language to reconnect to ancestry and culture. A classically trained Mezzo Soprano, she ran away from classical music early on to pursue wider artistic interests. Now, Nicole uses voice, song, sound and poetry to explore ideas around landscape and connectedness, making sense of her place in the world, reclaiming and reconnecting to ancestry. She has performed at Parliament House and the National Multicultural Festival, and her voice has been heard globally on award-winning film scores. Nicole has received commissions from PWC and Amex for meditations, songs and poetry, created soundscapes and music for podcasts and plays and is regularly commissioned through Red Room Poetry. Her poetry can be found in journals, on ferries, visual and sound pieces, exhibitions, publications and anthologies including Australian Poetry Journal, Mascara Literary review, Never Heard of Them, Baby Teeth Journal (2019), Guwayu: for all times, Magabala Books (2020), What we Carry, Recent Work Press (2021) and 20x20x12 Sensing Place, Manta Publishing (2021). In 2020, Nicole was the co-recipient of the 2020 Shoalhaven Arts Board Grant, a finalist in the Meroogal Women's Art Prize and shortlisted for the 2020 Red Room Poetry Fellowship. Her work is acquired and held in national collecting institutions.