Val Vallis Award
only after fifteen notes / did silence grip its tongue
—Val Vallis
Named in honour of a distinguished Queensland poet, the Arts Queensland Val Vallis Award for an Unpublished Poem is committed to encouraging poets throughout Australia.
This prestigious prize for an unpublished poem (or suite of poems) of 80 lines or fewer comes with a total value of $1,500.
The 2023 Val Vallis Award is closed.
2023 Judges
2023 Awardee/
Highest Queensland Entry
Judges comments:
‘Without prior consultation, this poem rose to the top of each of our shortlists; it was unquestionably our winner. An ekphrastic poem oriented across landscape pages, ‘Fragments…’ invites multiple — even fragmented — ways of reading. The result is something more often possible only in visual art: a precise and rich abstraction — not esoteric, but intimately offering many interpretations. ’
Jarad Bruinstroop’s debut poetry collection, Reliefs, won the 2022 Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize and is forthcoming from UQP in August. He is the current UQ Fryer Library Creative Writing Fellow. He holds a PhD in Creative Writing from QUT where he also teaches.
Runner-up
Judges comments:
‘This prose poem drops us in medias res into a living room with the cast of Seinfield blasting through the fourth wall to mediate a fraught mother-daughter relationship. Within the block constraint of the form, the poet alternates very long and very clipped sentences; the effect floats us along a stream of consciousness punctuated by illuminating dialogue. ’
Gayelene Carbis’s first poetry book, Anecdotal Evidence (Five Islands Press), was awarded Finalist, International Book Awards, 2019. Her second poetry book, I Have Decided to Remain Vertical (Puncher and Wattmann) was published in 2022. Gayelene is currently teaching Creative Writing at Swinburne University and working on new collections of poetry and prose.
Shortlist
Previous winners
2022
Dan Hogan
2021
Dimitra Harvey
2020
Helen Lucas
2019
Damen O’Brien
2018
Zenobia Frost
2017
Bronwyn Lovell
2016
Caitlin Maling
2015
Andrew Last
2014
Chloe Wilson
2013
B.R. Dionysius
2012
Chloe Wilson
2011
R.A. Briggs
2010
Michelle Cahill
2009
Andrew Slattery
2008
Anna Krien
2007
Andrew Slattery
2006
Nathan Shepherdson
2005
Ynes Sanz
2004
Judy Johnson
2003
Jaya Savige