2018 Prize winners

The winners of the 2018 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Poetry Prize were announced on 16 September at the Poetry on the Move Festival.

First Prize: Jazz Money | "As we attack"
Second Prize: Charmaine Papertalk Green | "We can!, We do!, We will!"
Third prize: Alison Nannup | "Innabaarn"

Highly commended:
Jillian Boyd-Bowie | "Woman"
Chella Godwin | "Jimmy Clements"
Hugo Comisari | "Etchings"
Samia Goudie | "Listen"

In 2018 we encouraged poems that addressed the NAIDOC 2018 theme Because of her, we can!, 'celebrating the invaluable contributions that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women have made – and continue to make - to our communities, our families, our rich history and to our nation.' (2018 NAIDOC week). We also encouraged poems on any topic.

2018 Prize Judges

• Yvette Henry Holt
• Lionel Fogarty

Judge Biographies

Yvette Henry Holt heralds from the Yiman, Wakaman and Bidjara Nations’ of Queensland In 2005 Yvette was awarded the Queensland Premier’s Literary David Unaipon Award for an untitled manuscript, her first publication titled anonymous premonition (UQP). Yvette now lives and works in the Australian Central Deserts, promoting financial literacy and community education across 500,000,000 square kilometres, while completing her manuscript on poetry and prose ~ uncovering what lays beneath the desert skin.

Lionel Fogarty is one of the best known contemporary Aboriginal Australian writers. A Yugambeh man, Fogarty was born on Wakka Wakka land in South Western Queensland near Murgon on a ‘punishment reserve’ outside Cherbourg. Throughout the 1970s he worked as an activist for Aboriginal Land Rights and protesting Aboriginal deaths in custody. He has published numerous collections of poetry in Australia through small presses and major publishing houses. His most recent collections include Mogwie Idan: Stories of the land (Vagabond Press, 2012), Eelahroo (Long Ago) Nyah (Looking) Möbö-Möbö (Future) (Vagabond Press, 2014), and Selected Works 1980-2016 (re.press, 2017).