May 18th, 2020Venie poetry prize

THE 2020 Venie Holmgren Environmental Poetry Prize, in partnership with Rabbit: a journal for non-fiction poetry, has been launched.

In her late 50’s Venie Holmgren began to write poetry and her first published anthology, The Sun Collection for the Planet  in 1989, became a poetry best seller.

At the same time, she applied her environmental activist skills and commitment to the campaign to save native forests near her home on the far south coast of NSW, where she was arrested twice for obstructing log trucks.

After 16 years of solo self-reliant living she moved to the town of Pambula where she penned her travel memoir, several more books of poetry and travelled widely as a performance poet. In 2010 Venie moved to Hepburn where she wrote her last poetry collection, The Tea-House Poems. In January 2016, Venie ‘caught the bus’ at the age of 93.

The judges for the 2020 $1000 prize are Jeanine Leane and Michael Farrell.

Jeanine Leane is a Wiradjuri writer, poet and academic from south-west New South Wales. She has published widely in the area of Aboriginal literature, writing otherness and creative non-fiction.

Originally from Bombala in New South Wales, Michael Farrell has lived in Melbourne since 1990. His new poetry book is Family Trees, the follow-up to the Queensland Literary Award-winning I Love Poetry. He has also won the Peter Porter Poetry Prize. He co-won the Venie Holmgren Poetry Prize in 2017 and was runner- up in 2018.

Poems must have an environmental theme and all entries must be received by 11.59pm on Monday, July 20.

Link: www.holmgren.com.au/the-2020-venie-holmgren-environmental-poetry-prize/