I’m a big fan of the Gwen Harwood Prize so I was very pleased to hear my poem Midnight bonsai was shortlisted for the 2026 award. Apparently they had 500 entries, all read blind by the three judges – Kate Middleton, Tim Loveday and Graeme Miles. Amazed that they were able to see what I was trying to do in Midnight bonsai. It’s one of those poems that continued to surprise me as I was writing it. During drafting it shifted from third to first person, like I was feeling around trying to find the voice. It’s loosely based on my brother and his partner, they’ve been together since they were teenagers. I guess most of all it was me being amazed at all they’ve been through together and how they always seem to find new things to explore. They’re a wild couple, they always have been!
Thanks to the judges, and congratulations to the other poets on the shortlist: Alisha Brown, Emilie Collyer, Dan Hogan, Caitlin Maling, Shey Marque, Gareth Morgan, Genevieve Osborne, Svetlana Sterlin and Troy Wong. Of course huge congratulations to Felicity Plunkett who won the prize, I love her work; and she does so much to support the work of poets around Australia and beyond…including editing my last collection Nekhau.
The full shortlist is here if you’d like to have a peek. All poems on the shortlist will be published in the next issue (177) of Island magazine, you can pick up a copy here.
I always love a judge’s report, here’s a few little highlights: “The shortlist as a whole represents a rich array of Australian poetry. These poems take us: from ‘necro-data products’ to the embodied realities of the chemo bed; from the longboat to the king hit; from deadly ‘Paris green’ made with arsenic to the eye processing the colour blue; from the historic treatment of autistic children to a life lived moving between ‘swimming at Carlton, reading at a café/across the road’ and home to the ‘veranda breathing wishes into air plants’. These poems move through forms and traditions with ease and ambition.” I also really appreciate the time these judges gave the poems, Kate writes in the judges report that “Each time we returned to the shortlist, we tested the poems against our everyday lives, examining how each one had moved with us through the world. We hope that these are poems that will return to readers’ minds as they have returned to ours.” Love that idea of poems moving through the world with people!
Anyway, search out issue 177 of Island if you’re curious!
Here’s the first stanza from Midnight Bonsai to get you started.
Midnight Bonsai
The ghost of every dog is barking tonight
and I’m in the yard twisting copper
wire around the branches of tiny trees.
Slick between my fingers, tender and pliable.
The smell heavy in my nose: crushed pine,
conductivity. Red leaf of tiny oak. I have to feel
their sap, know the wind in their branches.
I bend willing limbs until they find
the shape they could have been –
Rico Craig 