Oodgeroo Noonuccal Indigenous Poetry Prize
We are the shadow-ghosts creeping back as the camp fires burn low
—Oodgeroo Noonuccal
Queensland Poetry is proud to present Australia’s only open-age prize for an unpublished poem by an Indigenous writer.
With permission from the Walker family, and in close consultation with Quandamooka Festival, this prize is named in honour of Oodgeroo Noonuccal, the first Indigenous Australian to publish a book of verse .
The Oodgeroo Noonuccal Indigenous Poetry Prize is open to all Indigenous poets, emerging and established, throughout Australia.
The 2023 Oodgeroo Noonuccal Prize is closed
Judges
Paul Collis
Paul Collis is a Barkindji person from Bourke, on the Darling River in north-west New South Wales. His novel Dancing Home was the winner of the 2016 David Unaipon Award, and was published in 2017 by the University of Queensland Press. His first collection of poetry Nightmares Run Like Mercury was published in 2020. He teaches creative writing at the University of Canberra, where he earned a PhD in Communications.
Cheryl Leavy
Cheryl Leavy is Kooma from south west Queensland. Cheryl has enjoyed a varied career, starting out as a television journalist with the ABC. She’s worked across the private and public sector, with a focus on First Nations rights. Cheryl is currently working in the environment sector to achieve land justice for First Nations peoples.
2023 Awardee
Adam Brannigan for ‘The Weather Spirit (V
ersion 1.2)’
Adam lives and dreams on the unceded lands of the Gubbi Gubbi people. He has published work in anthologies, journals and online and has won prizes for his fiction. Adam is of Baadi/Walmadjari descent, but has other bloodlines that whisper to him.
Highly Commended
Tais Rose Wae for ‘Words Not Known at Dawn’
Tais Rose Wae is an artist and poet gratefully based on Bundjalung Country. Her widely-published poetry explores the interconnections and imprints of maps of lineage, motherhood, and her Aboriginal ancestry. Her first poetry collection, Riverbed Sky Songs, is forthcoming with Vagabond Press.
Shortlist
Maya Hodge for ‘If I Could Speak the Way You Do’ and
’for our people’
Maya Hodge is a Lardil and Yangkaal emerging writer and curator based on the lands of the Kulin Nation. Her practice is dedicated to disrupting colonial narratives and centring First Nations storytelling. Maya's writing is published by Kill Your Darlings, Craft Victoria, Cordite Poetry Review, Hardie Grant and Overland.
Tais Rose Wae for ‘Make a Home with These Hands’ and ‘Epilogue to Ceremony’
Tais Rose Wae is an artist and poet gratefully based on Bundjalung Country. Her widely-published poetry explores the interconnections and imprints of maps of lineage, motherhood, and her Aboriginal ancestry. Her first poetry collection, Riverbed Sky Songs, is forthcoming with Vagabond Press.
Lulu Houdini for ‘Sand Classroom’
Gomeroi woman, writer, arts worker, nurse and birth worker. Lulu works across many mediums and platforms with her hands.
Her visuals and writing dance with explorations of layered identity and the poetry of land, sea, sky and original story to which she belongs to.
Her writing traverses untraditional structures of poetry, personal essay and memoir, with her visual art and accompanying poems having been exhibited on Kabi Kabi Country and in Meaanjin. Lulu also facilitates writing accessibility workshops within community and currently lives on, cares for and creates on Kabi Kabi Country.
Previous winners
2022
Cheryl Leavy
2021
Dominic Guerrera
2020
Mykaela Saunders
2019
Jeanine Leane
2018
Brenda Saunders
2017
Jeanine Leane and
Sachem Parkin-Owens
2016
Julie Janson and Andrew Booth
