2023 Venie Holmgren Environmental Poetry Prize

The 2023 Venie Holmgren Environmental Poetry Prize has been launched by Holmgren Design with a major prize of $1000.

In her late 50s Venie Holmgren began to write poetry and her first published anthology, The Sun Collection for the Planet in 1989, became a poetry best seller.

At the same time, she applied her environmental activist skills and commitment to the campaign to save native forests near her home on the far south coast of New South Wales, 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 .

The judges are Hepburn Springs resident Peter O’Mara and Alison J Barton.

Peter's long friendship with Venie Holmgren is still held close. Peter has poetry work published in magazines, literary and critical writing journals, anthologies and online both in Australia and overseas.

Alison is a Wiradjuri poet whose work is widely published in myriad journals. In 2022 Alison’s poetry was recognised in the Queensland Poetry Oodgeroo Noonuccal Poetry Prize, the WB Yeats Poetry Prize for Australia and the Liquid Amber Press Poetry Prize.

All entries must be received by Monday, August 7 with the winner announced at the Words in Winter festival in Daylesford on Sunday, August 27.

*In a tribute to Venie after her death, journalist Kevin Childs started his piece in The Local's February 15, 2016 edition with the following:

"The farewell to Hepburn poet Venie Holmgren was as spectacular an event as many she saw in her 93 years.

"From her astonishing coffin, to the graveside where a bloke jumped into the hole, it was a day for some tears, much laughter, stories, and such warmth and affection that, were the day not so hot, would warm you through.

"For instance, how many funerals are there where, prominent among papers marking a life, is an ASIO file, noting that Venie and her late husband Jack ran a specialist magazine business opposite the Perth garage where the spooks parked their cars?"

Read the full story at www.tlnews.com.au

Poetry prize link: holmgren.com.au