The SCWC 2025 Poetry Award

South Coast Writers Centre Poetry Award 2024 winner Jen Saunders leads a poetry workshop responding to the gallery exhibition "Shape Shifters". This workshop aims to inspire and motivate participants to write new work. Participants will read and discuss examples of poetry that responds to both art and artist as a springboard for developing their own work. This workshop will include a 30-minute exhibition tour led by gallery staff.

• Poetry Workshop introductory talk 12:30 - 12:45

• Gallery-Volunteer-Led Shape Shifters Exhibitions Tour 12:45 - 1:15

• Poetry Workshop 1:15 - 2:45

Image: Michael Butler, Are You Being Served?, 2007, collage, pen on board. 40(h) x 84.2(w) cm. Private Collection. Photograph Jennifer Leahy

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Jen Saunders is a researcher using words, sound and visual art to investigate narratives of local place. In 2024 Jen won the South Coast Writers Centre Poetry Award, judged by Judith Beveridge. She has been shortlisted for the Peter Porter Poetry Prize (2017), the joanne burns MicroLit Award (2016), and published poetry in Hecate, Hobo, Imago, Australian Book Review and Cordite. Her essays and fiction have appeared with The Sociological Review, GeoHumanities (with Susan Ballard), The Conversation, Baby Teeth Journal and Landmarks (a Spineless Wonders anthology).

BOOKINGS

The winning poetry award entries will be published in the SCWC 2025 Anthology. Before you submit to the Poetry Award, we recommend that you read the exceptional work of the previous SCWC Poetry Award winners as published in our anthologies. Available here from the store. Get 10% with the code SUBMIT10

By entering the South Coast Writers Centre Poetry Award 2025 you agree to the following terms and conditions:

1. Who Can Enter?

1.1.      Entry is open to anyone living in Australia over the age of 18, with the exclusion of:

1.2.      Committee of management members and staff of the South Coast Writers Centre.

2. How to Enter?

2.1.      The competition commences on December 7th 2024 and close 2nd March 2025 11:59pm AEST.

2.2.      Entries must be single poems of no more than 50 lines. Only one poem should be submitted per entry form.

2.3.      For entries not primarily written in English, an English translation should be provided for the judges.

2.4.      The text should be presented with 1.5 line spacing and in 12pt plain font. Pages should be numbered.

2.5.      The author’s name must not appear in the document or in the name of the digital file. The file name should include only the title of the poem.

2.6       The name of the poem (entry) should match the name of the digital file.

2.6.      Multiple entries are permitted, but each poem must be submitted individually.

2.7.      Entries must be original works written by an individual author.

2.8.      Entries should not be on offer to other publications or prizes for the duration of the competition.

2.9.      Previously published, or prize-winning poems will not be accepted.

2.10     All entries must be submitted via the entry portal on the South Coast Writers Centre website.

2.11.    Submission fee of $15 per poem. Reduced submission fee of $10 per poem for SCWC members.

3. Theme

3.1       The SCWC Poetry Award 2024 seeks poems responding to the theme ‘shapeshifter’.

3.2      Shape Shifters is an innovative retrospective of Australian collage at the Art Gallery of Wollongong. Many artists, beginning in the early twentieth century, have manipulated their images with adjuncts to do many things: to correct drawings, to play with composition, to decorate, and to make social and political comment. Shape Shifters will examine how re-purposed materials, concepts and subjects have evolved within an Australian context. Works in fabric, paper, moving images, and found or domestic objects will be exhibited in a celebration of this thrilling and accessible art form.

3.3       Submitted poems do not need to respond specifically to the exhibition. The Award invites creative interpretations to the theme ‘shapeshifter’.

3.4       The Wollongong Art Gallery Special Award will be awarded to the poem with the best specific response to the exhibition.

4. Prize and Publication Details

4.1.      The first-place winning entry will receive a $1000 cash prize and the second-place entry will receive a $100 cash prize.

4.2 The Ron Pretty Award of $100 award will be given to the best poem submitted by an SCWC member.

4.2       The Wollongong Art Gallery will award a $100 gallery store voucher to the poem that best responds to the exhibitions.

4.3.      The South Coast Writers Centre will publish all the four winning entries in its 2025 anthology plus the poems listed in the shortlist. Poets will retain the copyright of these poems and agree to licence them to the SCWC for publication.

4.4       The South Coast Writers Centre reserves the right to not publish the winner or any runners up.

5. Judging Process

5.1.      The winning entries will be chosen anonymously by a panel of judges.

5.2.      The chief judge will be Judith Beveridge.

5.3       In the event of unforeseen circumstances, SCWC reserves the right to change the judging panel.

5.4.      SCWC reserves the right not to award a prize if the judges so recommend.

5.5.      Announcement dates are TBA.

5.6.      The judges’ decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into about the judgements or the judging process.

5.7.      SCWC reserves the right to select an alternative winner in the event a winner is unable to satisfy these terms and conditions, forfeits, or does not claim the prize.

6. Privacy

6.1. Personal Information provided to SCWC for the purpose of conducting the competition and notifying the winner will be kept strictly confidential and will not be sold, rented, loaned or otherwise disclosed to a third party otherwise than in accordance with these terms and conditions

The SCWC Poetry Award 2024 responded to the theme ‘gentle’ in association with the Wollongong Art Gallery exhibitions of artist Ian Gentle.

Winner – Jen Saunders, ‘A Kiting of Spiders’, Runner-up – Greg McLaren, ‘Regent honeyeater’, Highly Commended – Eden (Ez) Knill, ‘girl & best friend.’, Highly Commended – Alisha Brown, ‘After my friend died, I took her to the aquarium’. Wollongong Art Gallery Prize Winner – Rosa O’Kane, ‘On Slack Water’, Highly Commended – Lili Pâquet, ‘At Rest’, Highly Commended – Eden Crain, ‘Fiddler Crab Sonnet’. Ron Pretty South Coast Writers Centre Members Prize, Winner – Julie Janson, ‘to cliffs we come’

Read judge Judith Beveridge’s comments about the winners here, and listen to some of the shortlisted poems in our brand-new Listening Lounge.

The SCWC Poetry Award 2023 responded to the theme ‘in colour’, in association with Wollongong Art Gallery’s exhibition Thinking Through Pink. Prize winners were Meredith Wattison, ‘And my pink ashes’; Scott Patrick-Mitchell, ‘Ouside the Cyanometer’; Kathleen Bleakley, ‘Crab Nest’; and Carolyn Leach-Paholski, ‘Pigment’.

Read the judges’ remarks by guest judge Peter Ramm here.