Western Australian Premier's Book Awards - Poetry Category Winners

2005

The Paradoxes of Water : Selected and New Poems, 1970-2005 - Rod Moran
(Salt Publishing)
Literary Editor for the West Australian, Rod Moran is known more for reading and critiquing books than for writing them, but wrongly so. He has three other volumes of poetry, and his recent Sex, Maiming and Massacre won the Margaret Metcalf Award for excellence in archival research. The Paradoxes of Water consists of poems sharply observed and keenly felt. At the same time, Moran’s poems have perspective, of politics and history, for example of how history is a snapshot of politics at a particular moment and from a particular point of view: in “The University,” we are told, “Plato’s silhouettes / flicker in the lecture hall – / doctrine, agit-prop.” A strong collection of his selected and new work from the past thirty-five years.

2004

Against Certain Capture - Miriam Wei Wei Lo
Five Islands Press
Judges' Comments
Against Certain Capture is a small collection of poems with a gravitas that derives from the intensity of their preoccupation with cultural, legal and biological connectedness in women's lives. A mother, writing to her distant son, sees "[a] faint outline of a person starting to form," and knows how words "flow out of a body and carry the ghost / of fingers, a face, a heart." Those people, those ghosts, are drawn from the lives of Lo's grandmothers: one Chinese-Malaysian, the other Anglo Australian. A collection about how to structure a life, to understand it if not to explain, it is also a collection about forgiveness.

2003

Peripheral Light - John Kinsella
Fremantle Arts Centre Press
Judges' Comments
John Kinsella is a poet of the Australian landscape: he is creating a tradition of Australian pastoral poetry, exploring shades of meaning in his vivid depictions of the Western Australian countryside and country life. Kinsella allows his readers to see familiar landscapes anew through his potent imagery. Peripheral Light is an impressive collection of old and new work that continues Kinsella's commitment to the idea of what he calls "international regionalism."

2002

Going Feral - Barbara Temperton
Fremantle Arts Centre Press
Judges' Comments
'Feral cat, surrounded by angry birds,/has the deck stacked against her.' These are two representative lines from Barbara Temperton's title poem that signal, immediately, the forthright style of this poet. Temperton has produced a captivating collection of poems notable for their arresting imagery and a strong sense of place. The poet touches us with the intensity of her attachment as people and places are memorably recalled as 'explosion(s) of grief/ and feathers'. The collection engages the reader by virtue of its accessibility and the exhilarating sense of participation one gets in lines that give the impression of being written with quite effortless ease. Here is verse at once immediate and tender ('Christmas') and frighteningly prescient ('I remember Wittenoom'). Temperton writes with an unusual (but not too obvious or declared) mastery of her public and private worlds.

2001

Halfway up the Mountain - Dorothy Hewett
Fremantle Arts Centre Press
Judges' Comments
This is a forthright and heartfelt exploration of personal journeys as well as powerfully rendered meditations on the Australian landscape. Here relationships are explored with honesty and localities given new meanings. Hewett's verse speaks directly to us, as the poetic voice explores evocative memories of moments that have shaped the life of this remarkable individual. There is a democratic bias to Hewett's verse as she reflects on events that influenced Australian life and values. Hewett is a skilful poet whose verses seek to "contain multitudes" only to find that life always escapes the frames we impose upon it.

2000

Parochial - Mark Reid
Fremantle Arts Centre Press
Judges' Comments
Reid is a poet who can recall grief and hold it by recreating simple moments. Written in a precise, forthright style, these poems about life and ordinary people have an unusual emotional power, direct and uncompromising. Whether communing with his bicycle or empathising with a dementia sufferer, Reid brings a compassionate as well as whimsical perception to his subjects. The voices range from the elegiac to the detached and critical.

1999

The Willing Eye - Tracy Ryan
Fremantle Arts Centre Press
Judges' Comments
The Willing Eye is a powerful volume made up of six sections that set up, at times, remarkable insights into human life and its complexity. Using the physical act of giving birth and moving through the life of the growing child, as these poems do, and focusing on place-on the detail of both landscape and interior spaces-we are literally taken on a journey. These poems are direct, mature, sometimes modest-looking, unadorned constructions that contain a great sophistication and clarity through their use of language.

1998 (Joint Winners)

The Hunt - John Kinsella
Fremantle Arts Centre Press
Judges' Comments
Kinsella's eighth collection of poems is concerned with capturing place and landscape in a new way. The poem always looks at its subject from an unexpected angle, whether it be country or people, moving freely and easily in the mind of the reader by offering vivid images of a recognisable world. These poems have a precision of image, a sharpness and a wonderful clarity. The Hunt is a satisfying and challenging volume of poems by a writer who has managed a robust and dynamic career earning him international acclaim.
The Gatekeeper's Wife - Fay Zwicky
Brandl & Schlesinger
Judges' Comments
This volume is a wonderful collection from a mature artist. Zwicky is confident enough to present poems as eclectic in their form and range as these - sometimes light and humorous and playful, and other times based on the most profound of emotional recollections. The project of each poem has an integrity of craft and approach and a voice that sings its knowledge and passion. The Gatekeeper's Wife is an elegant and eloquent volume of poems that are concerned with the current world and the act of looking back in re-consideration. There is dark humour and satire in this controlled and cerebral writing.

1997

The Wheels of Hama: Collected War Poems - Alec Choate
Victor Publishing
Judges' Comments
Alec Choate's The Wheels of Hama: Collected War Poems represents a major contribution to the war poetry of Australia. The poems span five years of conflict and document adept and compassionate observation of the people and landscapes of the Middle East, and the detritus of war. They include a sense of myth and ancient history appropriate to the area; this inclusion is both knowledgeable and poetically deft. The poems document moments of thoughtful stillness, rest or preparation before engagement in battle as well as battle itself. The tone is balanced and meditative, and full of respect: for what the poet sees, for the readers of the poems, and respect for poetic form. Many of the poems are long and beautifully sustained, giving evidence of the substance of the poet's skills. In one of his poems, Choate observes that "all he need do is watch, at times, and write". His poems are largely the product of these sympathetic observations about the people of cultures other than his own who are caught up in the destruction of warfare. These are narrative poems, written with attention to rhyme and metre, direct and magnificent nature poems and war poems. They are a kind of penance for having taken part in this destructive activity.

1996

Collected Poems - Dorothy Hewett
Fremantle Arts Centre Press
Judges' Comments
Dorothy Hewett's Collected Poems brings together a substantial and remarkably varied body of work spanning more than half a century's commitment to a neo-Romantic conception of poetry.

1995

Sandstone - Andrew Taylor
University of Queensland Press
Judges' Comments
Andrew Taylor's poems in Sandstone are intimate and meditative. With sea and sand as his muse he reflects on past experiences, family relationships and contemporary society.

1994

Peninsula - Dorothy Hewett
Fremantle Arts Centre Press
Judges' Comments
Dorothy Hewett's Peninsula is a remarkably powerful collection, elegiac, wise and passionate by turns, with a unique gift for language which conveys strong feeling.

1993

Full Fathom Five - John Kinsella
Fremantle Arts Centre Press

1992

The Garden of Gethsemane : poems from the lost decade - Mudrooroo Nyoongah
Hyland House

1991

Ask Me - Fay Zwicky
University of Queensland Press

1990

Beach Plastic - Caroline Caddy
Fremantle Arts Centre Press

1989

Dalwurra: The Black Bittern - Mudrooroo Narogin
Centre for Studies in Australian Literature

1988

Sky Poems - Philip Salom
Fremantle Arts Centre Press

1987

Dial Marina - Lee Knowles
Fremantle Arts Centre Press

1986

A Marking of Fire - Alec Choate
Fremantle Arts Centre Press

1985

Windfalls - Andrew Lansdown
Fremantle Arts Centre Press

1984

The Projectionist - Philip Salom
Fremantle Arts Centre Press

1983

Scarpdancer - Alan Alexander
Fremantle Arts Centre Press

1982

For Phillip - Andrew Lansdown
published in "Artlook"