May 22 - 2025
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'The seal' appears in Splinter, Issue 2, edited by Farrin Foster, and launched at the State Library
of South Australia, North Terrace, in Adelaide.
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Splinter, Issue 2, features 25 writers from across Australia, Japan, Canada, Nigeria, Lebanon,
the Philippines, and New Zealand.
New work by: Alex Cothren, Corey Theatre, Courtney Jaye, Ellena Savage, Erin Riley, Glenn Diaz,
Hasib Hourani, Jessica White, Jo Case, JP Wilson, Katie Smith, Madeleine Nattrass, Mag Merrilees,
Margot Albrecht, Naya Jehad Fathi Shalbak, Omar Musa, Oyewumi Fawaz Akorede, Rita Horanyi,
Rowena Vnuk, Royce Kurmelovs, Sarah Sands Phillips, Smriti Daniel, Sofya Gollan, Stephanie
Westwood, and Wes Lee.
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'Sharp and hard to ignore. Splinter is a literary journal for writers and readers that is published
biannually out of Tarntanya (Adelaide, Australia) by Writers SA, and supported by Arts SA,
Flinders University, the University of Adelaide and UniSA.'
Issue 2 is available in independent book shops in Australia and can be purchased here.
'I was looking for affecting insights on the anthropocene this issue, and 'The seal' is so resonant
on the theme - I love the many layers to it, and the seamless focal shifts across time.'
— Farrin Foster, Splinter
'We're so glad that we can share their excellent, chaotic, chilling, and often beautiful work.'
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May 16 - 2025
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Awarded second prize in The Fish Poetry Prize 2025, selected by the judge, former US Poet Laureate
Billy Collins.
The winning poets and honorary mentions have been announced on the Fish Publishing website in Ireland.
There were 1,886 entries this year.
"Wes Lee's Prayer at the Cove"... All done in one breathless sentence, this poem is a syntactic tour de force.
The mix of swan, seal, whales, ducks, and dandelions keeps adjusting the scene on this engrossing, attentive ride,
as the consciousness that guides the poem chases itself to an ending. How refreshing to be in the mind of another
if only for a moment or so.' — Billy Collins
Fish Publishing is an independent publishing company based in the West of Ireland. It was founded
in 1994 by Clem Cairns and Jula Walton. The Fish Poetry Prize was established in 2006.
Billy Collins is the author of twelve collections of poetry. A Distinguished Professor of English at Lehman
College of the City University of New York and Senior Distinguished Fellow at the Winter Park Institute
of Rollins College, he was Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003 and New York State Poet
from 2004 to 2006. In 2016 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
The winning and commended poems will be published in The Fish Anthology 2025 in July and will be
invited to read at the launch during the West Coast Literary Festival in Bantry, Co. Cork, Ireland.
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May 5 - 2025
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'Naked' appears in Westerly 69.2, edited by Daniel Juckes, at the Westerly centre,
University of Western Australia.
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Featuring new work from writers and artists across WA, Australia and the world, Westerly 69.2
showcases a range of contemporary poetry, fiction, nonfiction. Contributors to 69.2 include Carrie Chappell,
Nandi Chinna, Rashida Murphy, Julie Watts, John Kinsella, Pidj Flavell, James Salvius Cheng,
Sharon Mesmer, Liam Byrne, Wes Lee, Miriam Wei Wei Lo, Hannah McCann and many others.
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Westerly 69.2 can be purchased throughout Australia, or through the Westerly website.
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April 23 - 2025
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Awarded second and third prizes in The Plaze Poetry Prize 2025, selected by
the judge, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natalie Diaz, in the UK.
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The winning, commended, and shortlisted poems (for an individual poem with
a maximum length of 60 lines) have been announced on The Plaza Prizes website.
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'Reading the finalist poems for The Plaza Poetry Prize was like shining a bright light
into my end of winter days. Many of the poems were pulsing and rippling with
emotional imagery and powerful ruminations on what it means to be alongside one
another in this world, as miraculous beings, despite our wounds and losses.'
- Natalie Diaz
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The Plaza Prizes offer a prize pool of 20,000 pounds (US $30,000).
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The award ceremony will be held in the Dordogne, France on 16th of October 2025
to launch The Plaza Prizes Anthology 3.
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'In her soaring poems, Diaz deepens and revises the word "postcolonial", demonstrating
not only that love persists in the aftermath of colonialism, but that it provides a means
of transcendence too.' - The Guardian
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