RSL Ondaatje Prize

• RSL Ondaatje Prize Shortlist

The annual award of £10,000 for a distinguished work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry, evoking the spirit of a place.

RSL Ondaatje Prize 2021 – The Shortlist

We are excited to announce the shortlist for the RSL Ondaatje Prize 2021.

Ruth Gilligan  The Butchers (Atlantic Books)

Louise Hare  This Lovely City (HQ)

Adam Mars-Jones  Box Hill (Fitzcarraldo Editions)

Nina Mingya Powles  Magnolia, 木蘭 (Nine Arches Press)

James Rebanks  English Pastoral (Allen Lane)

More details here

Gaps in the Light uses form in innovative ways to express deeply the experience of loss and joy in ways I can’t remember reading anywhere else. Nothing is binary here – everything feels multidimensional, so perfectly complicated, like echoes off multiple surfaces. It’s simply astounding!
~ Pip Adam, author of Nothing to See, The New Animals, I’m Working on a Building, and Everything We Hoped For

To read this work is to enter the forest as an elemental being, and then feel the loss of that forest. The lover, the bereft and the broken are here. It’s a journey of close attention, pain, rage and truth revealed as the path is taken. Gaps in the Light is compassionate, deeply chanted music.
~ Kirstie McKinnon, author of Songs from the Water

Gaps in the Light burns with fierce emotion; multiple voices float in and out until the whole text becomes hypnotic and taut … revealing the depths, nuances and complexities of love in all its forms with an utterly-earned intensity. Iona Winter asks you to stare directly into her eyes … be warned, she won’t blink first.
~ Helen Lehndorf, author of The Comforter and Write to the Centre

The next film in our Different Out Loud series is Te Ara Kanohi, an understated and emotionally powerful piece from poet Serie Barford. In her poem Te Ara Kanohi, she explores the emotional terrain of love and loss, in the geographical context of the west Auckland beaches and forests she and her late partner explored together. The second film in our Different Out Loud film series, filmed by Anna Marbrook, Te Ara Kanohi is a nuanced and powerful emotional discourse by one of New Zealand’s strongest poets at the top of her game.

Watch here

Go here for details

Full programme here

I am looking forward to heading to Featherston’s Booktown at the beginning of May. I am doing several events with children and several adult ones, including a two-hour poetry workshop with children (if you know any that might like to come to that!).

A poetry feast on offering too! There are short popUP poetry readings in the hall – I am reading about 11 am.

Here are a few poetry highlights (there are more):

Listen to Selina Tusitala Marsh at the Fish’n’Chip Supper

Catch the fabulous energy of the Show Ponies crew with MC Jordan Hamel

My poetry workshop for children

Catch up with Rose Lu (ok not poetry but this will be great!)

More poetry! Get ready for a little truth-telling from Caro DeCarlo, Emma Barnes, Vana Manasiadis, Rachel McAlpine and Helen Rickerby.

Continuing our series of Late Nite Lit events, emerging poets Mike Fitzsimons, Tim Grgec, Tayi Tibble and Sam Duckor-Jones will square off against more established Aotearoa poets Paula Green; New Zealand’s first Pasifika Poet Laureate, Selina Tusitala Marsh; and Rachel McAlpine in a poetry collision. If the event runs to schedule and there aren’t prone bodies all over the stage, MC Mary McCallum will invite members of the audience to take the mic. Poetry Collision is supported by Creative New Zealand.

I get to make my poetry picks for the Book Awards!