Ghost Poem a winner

It was with great pleasure and a little sadness that I judged the Idiom 23 Bauhinia Literary Awards Open Poetry competition this year. Having judged the poetry comp for a few years, I felt it was time for a fresh eye and a new perspective and decided to step aside and let someone else step up.

But the surprise and the pleasure this year was the winning poem, one of Nathan Curnow's Ghost poems and the first one out of the box...bodes well for the rest of his collection which I look forward to reading when it is published. A very interesting poem, well worth the prize, good onya Nathan.

Four of the 'Job' sequence up and running

Four of the thirty poems from my poetry sequence Holding Job's Hand will be published in Social Alternatives next edition. I'm pleased to see them start to move out and happy for them to appear in the School of Education, University of Queensland publication.

The following blurb appears on the inside cover of the journal;
What is Social Alternatives?
Social Alternatives is an independent, quarterly, multi-disiplinary, refereed journal. It analyses, critiques, and reviews contemporary social, cultural, economic, and ecological developments to determine their implications at local, national and global levels. Because we value artistic endeavour, we publish short stories and poetry.

Wow, cool.

Launching this week-end at QPF

Angela Gardner's 2006 Thomas Shapcott award winning collection 'Parts of Speech' (UQP 2007) will be launched on Saturday at the Queensland Poetry Festival. Angela is the Editor of the online journal foam:e and a friend of mine. I've had the pleasure of reading her wonderful book and look forward to the official launch at the Judith Wright Centre's Performance Space during this week-end's poetry festival events. Angela is the Editor of foam:e and a well known visual artist as well as a poet. Her collection is outstanding and in particular, the sequence 'The Twelve Labours'.

Foam:e's 2008 edition will see me guest editing and will include a review of 'Parts of Speech' by Jena Woodhouse. I am still looking at accepting poetry submissions up until end November, so if you haven't already sent something, knock yourself out, send and see what happens.

...

Also launching with Angela's book is 'The Best Australian Poetry 2007' (UQP 2007) - Series Editors Bronwyn Lea & Martin Duwell and Guest Editor John Tranter. I've had a sneak preview and think that many will be surprised and also delighted with Tranter's selections.

One paragraph in Martin's & Bronwyn's introduction which caught my attention, (and following discussion of Jacket's online success);

"A short list of other Australian-based, online poetry magazines that have steadily grown in profile might include Cordite, Divan, Retort, Stylus Poetry Journal, hutt and foam:e.
Since we monitor each year the ground rules for our anthology, we have updated our initial decision to avoid taking poems from electronic journals. In coming anthologies, we intend to add the best of these sites to our list of literary magazines from which we source the year's best poems."

A little celebration now surely.
All the poems published in those online journals are likely to get a look-in for next year's collection.
The online revolution, yeah...