Siobhan Harvey scoops poetry award
The prestigious Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems has this year been awarded to AUT's Creative Writing Lecturer Siobhan Harvey.
The prize is the premier annual competition of the International Writers Workshop (IWW), formed in 1976 by poet and writer Barbara Whyte with the aim of fostering and encouraging writers of all types.
Siobhan Harvey says she is overwhelmed and delighted to have won the 2019 prize on November 20 for her sequence of poems entitled Ghosts.
“My joy is especially magnified because this success comes as a result of selection by a poet and academic I particularly admire, Dr Bryan Walpert.
“I am truly honoured and humbled by my success in this year's competition.”
Professor Bryan Walpert of Massey University judged the competition and says Ghosts was a striking sequence of poems marked by “admirable control over syntax, rhythm and sound, as well as an urgency that is both political and lyrical”.
AUT Master of Creative Writing alumni Gillian Roach was runner up for her poem sequence Mute as Bottles, marked by “masterful description, precise word-play, humour and wry social commentary”, Professor Walpert says.
In 2013, Siobhan Harvey won the Kathleen Grattan Award with a manuscript later published as Cloudboy.