July 7th, 2022Venie Poetry Prize

The 2022 Venie Holmgren Environmental Poetry Prize, in partnership with Rabbit, a journal for nonfiction poetry, has been launched.
Judges are Georgina Wood, a poet and environmentalist living on Worimi and Awabakal land, in Muloobinba/Newcastle, and Joel Davison, a Gadigal and Dunghutti poet, technologist and sustainable fashion entrepreneur.
Venie Holmgren started to write poetry in her late 50s and published her first anthology, The Sun Collection for the Planet in 1989, becoming 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 local 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 main prize is $1000 and entries close on Wednesday, August 10. The winner will be announced at the Words in Winter festival in Daylesford on Sunday, August 28.
Link: www.holmgren.com.au