Anthologies

Named after one of Australia’s most politically conscious poets, the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize for New and Emerging Poets, the richest of its kind in the southern hemisphere, has unearthed some outstanding poets, many of whom are now mainstays in the poetic landscape. This book is an anthology of the winning poems from the first fourteen years of the prize. Not just a historical catalogue, the anthology includes a slew of other poems by the winning poets, showing off their development since featuring in the prize, and traversing much of the topography of Australian poetry in the early twenty-first century.

‘Judith Wright’s vanguard promise has emboldened progressive poets for decades, and the poems collected here flare with her bright yearning for justice, compassion and fidelity.’
—Peter Minter

‘An audacious, determined, polyphonous and dynamic anthology, Groundswell is conversant with the crises of now.’
—John Kinsella

‘… allows the reader to follow the wind as it whips across this exhilarating and finely calibrated poetic field.’
—Keri Glastonbury

‘… an impressive and valuable book.’
—Pam Brown

‘The act of writing is an aural event.’ —Ania Walwicz (1951–2020)

Best of Australian Poems is a new annual anthology collecting previously published and unpublished poems to create a poetic snapshot of the year that was. Capturing the richness and diversity of Australian poetry, across a timeframe of 1 July 2020 – 30 June 2021, the series will explore how poetic responses to the contemporary moment develop with each passing year.

The book opens with an introduction by its 2021 editors, award-winning poets Ellen van Neerven and Toby Fitch. They discuss their approach to curating the ‘aural events’ of this inaugural anthology, which features 100 poems across a considered, also provocative at times, range of poetic voices, approaches and themes.

The Best of Australian Poems (BoAP) series is published by Australia’s national poetry organisation, Australian Poetry, and will feature two different guest editors each year.

‘Transforming My Country’ is a selection of fourteen poems by fourteen poets, each responding to Dorothea Mackellar’s iconic, patriotic poem, ‘My Country’.

Poets include:

Alison Whittaker, ‘A love like Dorothea’s’
Natalie Harkin, ‘Heart’s Core Lament’
Justin Clemens, ‘My Coy Runt’
Benjamin Laird, ‘Core values’
Lisa Gorton, ‘EMPIRICAL VIII’
Ellen van Neerven, ‘My Country’
Marjon Mossammaparast, ‘(My) Country’
Jeanine Leane, ‘Beyond the Terror Nulling Us’
Hani Abdile, ‘Home far From Home’
Eileen Chong, ‘Country’
a.j. carruthers, ‘The Deuce-Gadzooks Agrestic-Campestral’
Dave Drayton, ‘My Country’
Lachlan Brown, ‘Wish’
Ali Cobby Eckermann, ‘TRANSFORMING MY COUNTRY’

“This is Australian Poetry Ltd’s fifth annual anthology of members’ poems. It’s neither a ‘Best of 2016’ nor a kind of open mic in print. The foreword says the book aims ‘to recognise and mark the organisation’s vitality and range’. When it goes on to quote G K Chesterton, ‘Poets have been mysteriously silent on cheese,’ it signals unmistakably that a further aim is to give pleasure. It worked for me on both fronts.” —Jonathan Shaw, reviewed here.