QRAA Ekphrasis Challenge
The QRAA Ekphrasis Challenge invites poets Australia-wide to respond to artworks featured in the Queensland Regional Arts Awards.
Each of the nine poets selected is awarded a fee for their writing, which is published as didactic response alongside the works either online or as part of the physical tour of regional Queensland.
The QRAA Ekphrasis Challenge is now closed.
Submit by 5 December 11:59pm.
If you have not received confirmation of your entry within one week of the closing date, please get in touch.
Prize
This challenge offers nine paid publishing opportunities, each worth $250 to the successful poet.
The selected poem for each of the nine categories* (that is, one per artwork) will be published on a didactic panel alongside its matching artwork from the QRAAs.
*excludes ‘People’s Choice Award’
2022 Judge
Marjon Mossammaparast
Marjon Mossammaparast is a secondary school English teacher in Melbourne. Her first collection of poetry, That Sight (Cordite Books) won the 2019 Mary Gilmore Award, was shortlisted for the 2019 Queensland Literary Awards and was commended in the 2018 Anne Elder Award. Her second volume, And to Ecstasy, was released in March 2022 through Upswell Publishing. Marjon has lived in Iran, Italy, China and Macau.
2022 Awardees
Click on the links below to view each the artworks and poems:
Artwork:
Wish You Were Here 1 by Kellie O’Dempsey
Winner:
Donna Best
‘The Traveller Through Spacetime Wishes Tomorrow’
Artwork:
Signed Planet Earth by Julie Field
Winner:
Sam Morley
‘Signed Planet Earth’
Highly Commended:
Felicity Plunkett
‘Thrive’
Artwork:
Sunday Morning - Ukraine by Jan Strudwick
Winner:
Brent Cantwell
‘Sunday morning in Mariupol’
Artwork:
The Swimming Lesson by Jule Polkinghorne
Winner:
Isabella G. Mead
‘Light on Water (Sound on)’
Highly Commended:
Sam Morley
‘Swimming Lesson’
Artwork:
Cataloguing Absence by Rose Rigley
Winner:
Rosanna Licari
‘My Athenaeum’
Highly Commended:
Svetlana Sterlin
‘Trinkets’
Artwork:
Who Gives a Crap by Karike Ashworth
Winner:
Isabella G. Mead
‘Remants [Morning Walk]’
Highly Commended:
Max Ryan
‘Supermarket Worker’
With thanks to our co-producer Flying Arts, and judge Marjon Mossammaparast.
2021 Awardees
View the Paint the Town PDF catalogue on the Flying Arts website.
Click on the links below to view each the artworks and poems:
Artwork: The Royal by LeAnne Vincent, 2021
Winner: Linda Albertson – ‘Today’
Artwork: Town meets Town by Western Campbell, 2021
Winner: Ben Walter – ‘Unfenced’
Artwork: Ignite by Michelle Kurth, 2021
Winner: Dave Drayton – ‘Treat Yourself’
Artwork: Stolen by Darren Blackman, 2021
