The C J Dennis Prize for Poetry: Shortlist 2006
Judges
Judith Rodriguez (Convenor), Rodney Hall and Emma Lew
The 63 poetry entries demonstrate the field’s profusion and variety. Over a dozen books remained in contention at a late stage. Several first books made strong claims, for instance, those by Aidan Coleman and Luke Beesley – and this in a year when entrants included a number of acclaimed poets. Like previous judges, we note that 'Selecteds' are at a disadvantage if they do not offer a substantial number of previously uncollected poems, eligible within the award’s guidelines.
All the short-listed works engage the reader by the imaginative reach of the project as well as by poetic skills and voice.
Shortlist
Universal Andalusia
B.R. Dionysius
(Soi3/Papertiger Media)
B.R. Dionysius’s book-length picaresque sequence, Universal Andalusia, is a brash, exuberant, packed free-associative work. Here, rather larger than life, is a dead-serious Australian at large with his Australienne, Baldwin with his Roxane, and their world of travel discoveries. Readers bounced about, aghast, in the chaos of Baldwin’s argot, cultural references and misadventures have Dionysius to thank for an endearingly risky spree.
The Kindly Ones
Susan Hampton
(Five Islands Press)
Half of Susan Hampton’s The Kindly Ones is given over to the impressive title poem, in which the Furies of Greek tragedy, arriving in today’s Australia weary of their trade of vengeance, take up compassion instead. Their exploration of new world lives is criss-crossed with darker memories from the Greek mythic past. The immediate and uncontrived language of her shorter poems serves both the surprise and inspiration she draws from moving in countryside, and the accumulation of details that map the psychology of family interaction.
Urban Myths: 210 Poems
John Tranter
(University of Queensland Press)
The new and uncollected poems in John Tranter’s Urban Myths make a significant addition to his oeuvre. Control and ease are evident in the writing, which displays personages, occasions and moods of the metropolitan modern world. Tranter’s latest poems refresh through the exercise of urbane skills: this is a poet suave and playful, but never aloof; linguistically various, assured in style, and never less than fully attentive.
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