Poetry Prize 2010

Comments by Peter Boyle & MTC Cronin - from the Judges' speech at the Awards Night dinner

‘A man is what he thinks about all day long.’ (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Perhaps a poem is what a man thinks about all his life long. Its subject matter, style and sensibility might vary, but it consists of what demands our eternal and unwavering attention, what is ever-present – that we care. And it is language that makes the evolution of this care – our humanity – something we can take charge of and share. Each of us is the one of the many. And poetry is the part of our language that speaks of – and speaks to make beautiful – this paradox of being: that we die alone yet only seem to live in and through and for others. As is said in tonight’s winning poem, ENDTIME:

excluding guns and ammo you look beautiful tonight
out there the shining bald opinions of men
lighting the beacons ingesting grams of hunger
the clods of dirt the tiny hearts

...The winning poems tonight – ENDTIME, ALWAYS SOMETIMES NEVER, DEAD SEA PSALMS & ONE BROKEN KNIFE – all belonged to their authors and by this I mean the voices that spoke them were fully responsible for their ideas. They knew what they were saying and in the words of Guillevic: ‘To know makes us carry / The full weight of our deeds.’ There is much talk about nurturing national (or state, regional, or local) identity, as if in this country we fear accusations of a lack of a ‘truly Australian culture’. Our communities (our contexts) are important and we all desire to know ‘who we are’. However, we do need – in addition to literature that celebrates who we are here and now and who we might want to be – a literature that goes beyond the particularities of any one time and place. Poetry that speaks and can be heard ‘outside history’. Poems that might have been written by anyone, anywhere.

We know when we read great work because no matter who wrote it and where it is from it is speaking to us and it might also be us speaking. It tells us what we know that we didn’t know we knew. Thus, it makes us feel foolish and wise at the same time. Australian literature, I think, needs more poetry that makes us realize more than just what we think of ourselves. It needs poetry that might enable us to think of innumerable ways in which we might imagine ourselves. More than anything, it needs poets like the ones here tonight who care enough to be able to write what will remain worthwhile.