Peter Porter Poetry Prize

We welcome entries in the third ABR Poetry Prize. In its short life, this competition has become one of the most prominent of its kind in the country. Poets have until December 15 to enter the prize, which is worth $2000. Up to six poems will be shortlisted in the March 2007 issue; the winner will be announced one month later. Full details appear on page 42. The entry form is also available on our website, or on request. The previous winners were Stephen Edgar and Judith Bishop. Advances was pleased to see that Judith Beveridge has included Edgar’s prize-winning poem ‘The Man on the Moon’ in The Best Australian Poetry 2006 (UQP) — one of eight poems in the anthology that were first published in ABR.

I stare from my study window into trees.
Considering all things, I watch the first snow spill
White seeds across the rubble where the barn
Towered over us with its cracked spire
For almost half a century until
Some feckless pot-head changed
The whole thing into fire.

The tough and rumble of the schoolyard
is always welcome relief from a room
papered with whispers, where every night

he must taste the salted honey of his pain
or else listen to the chorus of lies
that they hiss at one another in the dark.

Max remembers the first time they made love
when she arrived travel-dusty & sweaty
after complications
getting from Basrah to Baghdad. Much afterwards
while they were lying together very close
she’d told him of a pet she’d had, when small:
had given it its scientific name – Macropanesthia rhinoceros.

I. Claim

Wild birds rise before us, making the noise of a multitude clapping hands.
The men fire, fire again and still they rise, they rise clear out of range and
where they were they leave such wakes of light, they are tearing the blue-black
shadows out of the river; their wing tumult is shadows escaping air. Act
flung back to motives, they arc away from us and scatter till I am fierce
for what I cannot remember and still they rise, the vault is dark with their applause.