Joint winners:
Debi Hamilton for 'Red Riding Hood Grows Old'
Anthony Lawrence for 'Itinerary'
3rd Prize:
Philip Radmall for 'The Difference of Distance'
Local Winner:
Steve Armstrong for 'Deadman'
Harri Jones Memorial Prize Winner
(for a poem by a poet under 35 years):
Caitlin Maling for 'Border Crossing'
Hunter Writers Centre Members' award:
Kathryn Fry for 'Green Point Bearings'
Commendeds:
Jennifer Kornberger for 'The Twilight Observatory'
and
Lachlan Brown for 'Bracketing a Bursting House'
In addition to the above, the 2014 anthology features the following poets and their poems:
Vale, David Adès David Adès
Uluru Lisa Brockwell
The song of longing Liana Joy Christensen
Lampedo Rico Craig
Valour (Somme Sonnets) Brett Dionysius
Il Voce Joe Dolce
Rain Is Its Own Season Diane Fahey
Deposition Christine Fontana
Ned Kelly Dreaming Hilary Gilmore
States of Grace Patrick Gleadhill
Hell’s Bells John Jenkins
Lost Geographies Jill Jones
To the Picnic of Bears, a leg-up Christopher Kelen
Earlier Rosanna Licari
Houdini in Australia David Lumsden
At River Bend Frances Olive
The All Australian Girl Ian Pettit
Glass Letters Felicity Plunkett
Beethoven starts work on his great fugue Op.133 Derek Recsei
L Loy D John Scott
Hex Connor Strange
Horizons Alison Thompson
Eloquent Assassin Campbell Thomson
Walking the Undoing Anne Walsh
Double Exposure Chloe Wilson
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John Berryman saw birthdays as imaginative opportunities. Lecturing at Princeton in March 1951, he pictured Shakespeare on his 30th birthday. “Suppose with me a time, a place, a man who was waked, risen, washed, dressed, fed, congratulated, on a day in latter April long ago,” he began, “about April 22, say, of 1594, a Monday.” A birthday is a chance to greet across time: to hail a predecessor. In a late poem, Berryman addressed Emily Dickinson. It is December 10, 1970, and in “Your Birthday in Wisconsin You Are 140” he raises his glass to her. “Well. Thursday afternoon, I’m in W——,” he writes, “drinking your ditties, and (dear) they are alive.” A birthday is a moment of invention. The climax of his long poem “Homage to Mistress Bradstreet” is a violent, beautiful childbirth. “No. No. Yes! everything down / hardens I press with horrible joy down,” shouts Anne. “I did it with my body!” Close to the end of The Dream Songs, the cycle for which Berryman is best known, he writes: “Tomorrow is his birthday, makes you think.” John Berryman was born in McAlester, Oklahoma, on October 25, 1914, and this year marks his centenary.
Read on - a rich article all about Berryman and his major works - HERE
"Dream Song 76 (Henry's Confession)"
Nothin very bad happen to me lately.
How you explain that? —I explain that, Mr Bones,
terms o' your bafflin odd sobriety.
Sober as man can get, no girls, no telephones,
what could happen bad to Mr Bones?
—If life is a handkerchief sandwich,
in a modesty of death I join my father
who dared so long agone leave me.
A bullet on a concrete stoop
close by a smothering southern sea
spreadeagled on an island, by my knee.
—You is from hunger, Mr Bones,
I offers you this handkerchief, now set
your left foot by my right foot,
shoulder to shoulder, all that jazz,
arm in arm, by the beautiful sea,
hum a little, Mr Bones.
—I saw nobody coming, so I went instead.
- John Berryman
