The 2018 Venie Holmgren Environmental Poetry Prize is OPEN

Do you love writing poetry with environmental themes?

Then The 2018 Venie Holmgren Environmental Poetry Prize is a must for you!

This prize is in honour of environmentalist and poet Venie Holmgren. Venie began writing poetry in her late 50’s and published her first anthology, The Sun Collection for the Planet in 1989. 

From the Holmgren website:

Venie applied her environmental activist skills and commitment to the campaign to save native forests near her home on the far south coast of NSW where she was arrested twice for obstructing log trucks. After 16 years of solo self-reliant living she moved to the local town of Pambula where she penned her travel memoir, several more books of poetry and travelled widely as a performance poet. In 2010 Venie moved to Hepburn where she wrote her last poetry collection, The Tea-house Poems. In January 2016, Venie ‘caught the bus’ at the age of 93.”

Who’s judging this year?

The judges for the 2018 prize are Jessica Wilkinson who is the founding editor of Rabbit: a journal for nonfiction poetry and Stuart Cooke, a poet, critic and translator whose books include the poetry collections Opera and Edge Music.

Both the shortlist and winner will be announced 17-26 August 2018 during the Words in Winter Festival in Daylesford.

To enter: You must be an Australian or New Zealand citizen or be a permanent resident in either of those countries.
Poems must be no longer than 80 lines, written in English, unpublished and with an environmental theme.
First prize is $1000.
Entry fee of $10 per submission.
Entries close 11.59pm EST Friday 20 July 2018.

For more details on how to apply visit Holmgren.

So let your pens hit the paper (or your fingers hit the keys) and get submitting!