Theme – Discovery
May 2025 Winners & Judges
First Place Winner
The Hidden Pockets of Men by Jane Downing, Albury NSW
Heavy as armour –
I test the weight of his suit jacket
after death all flat surfaces
wearing their satin on the inside
A tailer’s label fades –
reads Exchequer Street Dublin
a spiv 1972 cut not worn for decades
pinstripe bars a prison not easily escaped
And in the sizing-up
my hand slips into each of the pockets
his hands once slipped into
one for each side, long emptied
There is a curse –
Do not fold a suit or the world will end!
yet I double the jacket over my arm
hold it to me hold it tight to me
Against my chest
a cumbrous lump of cloth impresses
an opening in the lining to be discovered
sat over where his heart once beat
Entry to the hidden pocket denied
by a button blue and small and threaded loose
Second Place Winner
A Dinosaur Bone Floats Down Main Street by Hannah McCann, Melbourne, VIC
(note: an image of the poem’s original formatting is provided below)
Text version – A Dinosaur Bone Floats Down Main Street
We figure the arc of history
bends toward the good
but that hot night below the archival boxes
a pipe keens out to an instant of knee-deep water
surging against the door gushing artifacts into darkness.
Clods of dirt bob in small jars
animal teeth wash a-skitter onto pavement
a plaster snout tied with a white bow
spins and drifts.
There is no ark only a passer-by
who discovers the scene the bone
starts scooping wildly at the gutter
trying to stem the river of antiquity headed for the drain.
How times slosh from mundane to catastrophic
how the bystander might intervene.
Third Place Winner
A Memorable Bush Dance by Robert Keith Anderson, Riverview, NSW
(note: an image of the poem’s original formatting is provided below)
Text version – A Memorable Bush Dance
I strode carefree around the rocky outcrop
and faced my partner, relaxed and poised,
waiting silently for no-one but me,
macabre in a striking, long, black, silky gown,
glistening in the warm autumnal sun,
a stark contrast to the dusty brown earth.
Piercing dark eyes met mine like lasers,
we were close enough to touch,
adrenaline surging,
heart drumming
and suddenly wet with sweat,
all sound soared to a crescendo.
My partner raised their head,
I gasped, cried out and sprang back,
I hadn’t meant to threaten,
one, two hops to the right,
as my partner swerved right,
I was caught out of step.
One, two skips to the left,
my partner swayed
then veered left with lightning speed,
I jumped right, then left, then right.
So close.
Would we connect?
But I was no match in speed and rhythm,
and my agile dance partner fled in seconds,
flaunting a blood red tartan under their jet-black gown
and tongue flicking a welcome kiss goodbye.
No need for me to call, “au revoir”,
as this dance lesson will last a lifetime.
Highly Commended
Cryonic Optimism by David Atkinson, Beecroft NSW
You do not have to drive far from town.
A single shed on the block commands adjoining paddocks,
the individual’s view obscured by walls and stark cylinders.
The buzz of temperature control; a draught
under the door caresses a suggestion of continuity.
Grasshoppers beat to the heat outside,
a mouse vaults through a shadow.
The sun keeps rhythm with the yellow box limbs,
caterpillar punctures its claim on a leaf;
there is no day like today.
A reverent responsibility to make provision
for lines of clean cases awaiting bodies
for preservation in liquid nitrogen.
Electing to pay an annual subscriber fee,
you then complete the “agreement for future suspension”.
There must be “informed consent” and approval of next of kin.
You need not plan stabilization and transportation;
this will be arranged for you. Patient One has arrived
to media acclaim so there is no time to waste;
join the queue. Scientists say that future reanimation
is unlikely but, if you are an optimist, do it now.
Not donating your organs a different type of gamble.
Treat death as a temporary shift in the light.
Reflect on the nature of discovery. Will the process work?
Who can say that another life will be better than the first?
There is no need for clocks for the passage of minutes
or hours. A kookaburra revels in his lizard,
roisters from the nearby fence; his current life is enough.
A dragonfly performs on the wire, a dance
with destiny on its likely day of death.
The first cryonics facility in the Southern Hemisphere opened in southern New South Wales early in 2023.
Your Vantage Point is Different by Allison Browning, Brunswick East, VIC
Autumn. The sun high. No word
from the crickets. We have
eaten and lie in the yard, part avoidance
of work, part baking — the glory
of full sun at this time of year. I talk
of memory — how flawed
mine is and you talk of
workplace agreements and unionism.
You tell me there’s pomegranates growing
on the tree and I say how the birds
and insects are always first in. Outside
of these bounds I have walked the streets searching
for inspiration. A nearby laneway with its parrot-picked
figs and rosemary bushes ripe with bees. Beyond that,
further: falling boom gates,
flashing red lights, train tracks flanked
by the backs of factories, graffiti-licked with scrawl and kissing men. But I
find myself home.
On the Astroturf, I tell you how I always long
for more, how I’ll agree to being just ‘okay’ but
never great. How fully committing to the sweetness
of a moment when things could be
different the next is like asking for trouble. Back indoors,
I say tea and you nod. Black, again, you nod.
The impulse to check outside for something else,
something that might offer more inspiration
on a page. Mug in hand, you stare vacantly out the French doors to where
wasps court the lemon tree.
Last week from the yard I watched a flock of cockatoos fly overhead
and my heart leapt.
Today there are meringue clouds, bright and still as a picture.
You could reach out and dip a finger in.
I might have said just clouds,
Today there’s just clouds.
but I don’t.
Evening Chorus by Scott-Patrick Mitchell, Padbury, WA
“The wonders of the sea… are the work of holy fingers”
Matthew Fontaine Maury (1854)
i.
Early oceanographers could not fathom
ocean floor, rising every night. Did some imagine
a leviathan’s lung inhaling circadian rhythms, waking
from slumber? Others hypothesised underwater islands
as if lost continents, drowned by the inscrutable
twilight zone’s darkness. Years later, this “false bottom”
was discovered to be fish, in the thousands, ascending
to feed, as if worshipping in the cathedral of the sea,
taking into them the body of Poseidon.
ii.
Each night, over Perth Canyon, an evening chorus.
Holy holy holy, the lanternfish turn their photophores
into starlight and rise up to feast on phytoplankton.
This, a dinner bell of evensong. Introit of the scales.
Preces of the fin. Canticle calling to the pod,
the shiver, the school. Shoal as voluntary organ
in the mouths of other songs. The hydrophone listens
in, captures the sonic melody of hunger that verticals
the water column as if an anthem of life. And death.
And then living, again. The recordings capture infinity
in the way a swim bladder releases a note, blessed and wet.
iii.
Each night, my mother used to sing when making a meal
for us, her brood of snapping mouths, her schooner
of hungry souls. Onion and garlic and sweet potato,
sliced into psalms, wafer for the communion, protein
binding to stainless steel, imprinting a visage of God
who gave themselves over to the heat, infused with salt,
with labour, with flavour, with love. Her fingers, crafting
new geologies from the minerals of Earth. And us, her calves,
collecting to mew and maul, pouring paean and doxology
across dinner table, our cutlery an antiphon in the chant
of cutting morsel. She served. We ate. Now, she only cooks
once a week, her hands arthritic with the knot of The Cross,
but still we devour, each of us eager to know her hymn,
fading.
iv.
This year, my mother will turn 90. The world turns to dust
eventually. The bottom shall fall out, away. There will be no
Atlantis, no Afterlife. We will discover that there’s just life
after this.
Excavate or Occupy by Angela Costi, VIC
(note: an image of the poem’s original formatting is provided below)
Text version – Excavate or Occupy
weeds infiltrate organs
worms grow the length of intestines
parasite hierarchies cross borders of skin
the lesions are said to infiltrate
stabilised for now
numbered uniformed badged
within the MRI I am the island
of silent flutters
as mind walks me to lakes and mountains
my cells mutate happily
among the ebbs and flows
of burrowing
as naked mole-rats do
without sight hair muscle
they continue to live with cancer as their quiet friend
they are probed by science to measure how freaky
still they live for over thirty years
if left to keep their spleen and marrow
defective genes march on
cannot be shriveled by laser
my surgeon continues to make discoveries
from medulla to coccyx
he excavates these rare deposits
gifted by ancestry
Judges
Lou Steer is a performance poet. Her performance highlights include performing to 100,000 people at Newtown Festival. She has performed at many festivals including Sydney Fringe Festival, Newcastle Fringe Festival, Winter Magic Festival, Mothertongue, Woman Scream International Festival, Cooks River Festival and Beams Festival.
She was the convenor of Caravan Slam, the largest poetry slam in Sydney’s Inner West, from 2015 – 2018. In 2023, she was awarded a grant by Inner West Council to write and produce her hour long play A Pocketful of Fierce Violets, which she performed with her performance group Fierce Violets at EDGE Sydenham and Sydney Fringe Festival.
Since 2022, she has co-presented and produced Close to Home on Radio Skid Row 88.9 FM and is a board member. In 2024, she was an alumni judge of Sydney Fringe Festival, the head judge of NSW Poetry Prize and was invited to attend as a guest poet at the 7th Boao International Poetry Festival in Thailand. Her poems are widely anthologised and have been translated into Chinese and published in New York and New Zealand. Her first poetry collection Fierce was published in 2025 by Girls on Key Press.
Denise O’Hagan is a Sydney-based editor and poet, born in Rome. She has a background in academic publishing, and was Poetry Editor with Irish literary journal The Blue Nib until 2020. Her poetry is published internationally and her recent awards include the Monica Taylor Poetry Prize and the NSW Poetry Prize. Her poetry collection Anamnesis (Recent Work Press) was a finalist in the Eric Hoffer Book Award (USA) and shortlisted in the Rubery Book Award (UK). She is currently writer in residence at Don Bank Museum, Sydney, where she is working on her third poetry collection, What the Mirror Tells.
As the inaugural winner of the NSW Poetry Prize in 2024 we were delighted to extend an invitation to Denise to be on this year’s judging panel. Follow Denise at https://denise-ohagan.com
Jo Skinner is a Brisbane based GP who writes contemporary women’s fiction as well as freelance non-fiction articles about women’s issues and mental health. She is the author of two novels. The Truth about My Daughter, released in 2024 and A World of Silence released in April 2025.
She also has a distance running habit. When she is not working or writing you will find her accruing kilometres while plotting her next story. She is married with three children.
She has a website and writes a monthly newsletter with articles about running, writing, GP wisdom, a book review and a piece of her own writing in every edition. Follow Jo at https://www.johannaskinner.com/
Jane Connolly. Jane’s professional life was as an educator, speech writer, and corporate communicator. In 2000 and 2001, she was the Queensland judge of the Children’s Book Council (CBCA) Book of the Year Awards, a role which saw her reading, reviewing, and evaluating over six hundred books for children from early childhood to adolescence. Most recently, Jane was a judge of the Sydney Hammond Short Story
Award.
In retirement Jane, who delights in language in all forms, is an avid reader, book reviewer, and writer who co-edited Stories from the Heart, an anthology of stories set during the COVID period, and a social history of a local GP practice.
Benjamin (Ben) Webb. Ben is a twenty-year-old screen and theatre actor based in Sydney Australia. His infectious energy and riveting smile capture the crowd. His passion for telling stories, embellished by his own life experiences, imbue his performances with authenticity. Ben has trained extensively including at NIDA, ATYP, ITS, Hub Studio, and the Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre where he currently works as a drama teacher artist. Ben is studying a Bachelor of Education (Secondary) majoring in performance
and theatre and French at Sydney University and has graduated with a Diploma of Theatre and Screen (Acting) from Sydney Theatre School.
Recent acting credits include: with the Richmond Players, he played Jack Decapitated in ‘Titanic: The Diamond of Dreams,’ and Thomas Klopper in ‘The Book of Everything’, and with Shakespearience Australia, he played Francis Flute in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, Silvius in ‘As You Like It’, and, Benvolio in ‘Romeo and Juliet’.
Sharni Andersson is a queer playwright passionate about telling stories that delve into the guts of what it means to be human, exposing the dirty laundry and making you laugh while doing it. In 2024 they were a participant in ATYP’s Fresh Ink National mentoring program and in 2025 they are undertaking their Masters of Fine Arts at NIDA.
Colette Robinson (Author/Publlisher) was born and raised in Belfast, Northern Ireland where myths, legends, and the traditional art of storytelling is embedded in the Irish culture. She emigrated to America and then onwards to Australia where she now lives with two daughters and a crazy, but very cute, golden retriever, Murphy. Bessie Beam from Brayfoot Cottages is her first children’s book, inspired by long held memories, and the tradition of passing stories to the next generation. Follow Colette at https://www.robinsonreads.com.au/
Martina Kontos is an emerging writer from South Australia who recently won the Plaza Poetry Prize (20 lines). She has also been commended in the Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine, and shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize and the ACU Prize for Poetry, among others. She has poetry and fiction published in Open Minds Quarterly and Voiceworks, and is working towards her first poetry collection and a novel. Follow Martina at www.martinakontos.com.
Daniel Mautner is a poet, fencer and uni student studying at the University of Sydney. He happily runs the Poetry Society and is trying to create a community of poets at his uni. In his free time, he is also the managing editor of the global Words with Weight magazine and is a published poet: Maudlin House, Hemlock journal, Lane Cove Literary Awards Anthology. Which leaves just enough time in the day to enjoy bread for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Follow Daniel on Instagram at: daniel100010001 or the poetry society at: usydpoetrysoc
Andrew Whalan is a poet and writer living in Naarm (Melbourne).
He began writing poetry as a teenager inspired by John Masefield’s, “Sea Fever” and John
Milton’s sonnet, “On His Blindness.”
He returned to poetry in 2011 after a 33-year hiatus as husband, father and husband no
more receiving encouragement through open mics in Sydney and Melbourne.
By day he is an Information Technology trainer and documentation writer. Post twilight he
writes and publishes poetry on Instagram (@andrewjwhalan) and Substack (andrewisapoet.substack.com).
He is currently working on two anthologies, tentatively titled, “The Sky was never blue” and
“Post-Parental Alienation.” Follow Andrew at https://andrewwhalan.com/
Carlo Catalano is a life long avid reader of poetry, first published in the Catholic press, 1968: Sonnets from Bauli and Juvenalia.
Carlo studied English at the University of Sydney with emphasis on the Troubadours & Imagist poetry and says that being Italian, he “ruined himself” with Dante & Ariosto then the wild freedoms of E.E. Cummings.
Carlo is a former performance artist at Art Space & Performance Space throughout the 1980s and a founding member of Virtual Object, a techno art group including Stellarc & Simon Penny.