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Named in honour of a distinguished Queensland poet, the Arts Queensland Val Vallis Award for an Unpublished Poem is committed to encouraging poets throughout Australia.
This prestigious prize for an unpublished poem (or suite of poems) of 80 lines or fewer comes with a total value of $1,500.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
Benjamin Dodds
Benjamin Dodds is a Sydney poet who grew up in the NSW Riverina. His collection Airplane Baby Banana Blanket (Recent Work Press, 2020) was a Judith Wright Calanthe Award finalist and shortlisted for the Poetry Book Awards. He is a proud public school teacher.
Zenobia Frost
Zenobia Frost is a Brisbane poet whose latest collection, After the Demolition, unpacks the sharehouses of Brisbane. She won the 2020 Wesley Michel Wright Award and Queensland Premier’s Young Publishers and Writers Award, and has performed across Australia. She loves to watch Fixer Upper.
2023 Awardee/
Highest Queensland Entry
Jarad Bruinstroop
‘Fragments on the Myth of Cy Twombly’
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
Gayelene Carbis
‘What We're Not Going To Talk About’
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
Sarah Temporal
‘Three Secrets’
Sarah Temporal is a poet and educator living on Bundjalung lands in the NSW Northern Rivers. Her work appears in journals and anthologies including Best of Australian Poems 2021. She is the director of Poets Out Loud, and collaborates with circus artist Britt Portelli on ‘The Birth Suite’.
Stuart Barnes
‘Starting and Finishing with a Line from Lisel Mueller's "Cicadas" ’
Stuart Barnes is the author of Like to the Lark (Upswell Publishing, 2023) and the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Prize-winning Glasshouses (UQP, 2016). His ‘Sestina after B. Carlisle’ was awarded the 2021/22 Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize. He lives and works on Darumbal county, Rockhampton, and tweets and grams as @StuartABarnes. www.stuartabarnes.com
Jenny Pollak
‘Christmas Eve (with oysters)’
Jenny Pollak is a visual artist and poet living on Dharug country at the mouth of the Hawkesbury River. Her poetry has been published in various journals, including Meanjin; Cordite; APJ; Red Room Poetry; Verity La, Plumwood Mountain; and foam:e. In 2016 she won the Bruce Dawe Poetry Prize.
Jo Lyons
‘Passerine Nocturne’
Jo Lyons is a poet, artist and editor. For the past fifteen years she has worked as an editor for leading Australian publishers. Jo’s poetry will feature in Cordite Poetry Review in May 2023 and in the group art exhibition Visions of the Illawarra at Wollongong Art Gallery in 2024.
Damen O’Brien
‘Graduation Day’
Damen is a poet based in Brisbane. Damen has won or been shortlisted in most of Australia’s foremost poetry competitions for individual poems as well as receiving recognition internationally including The Moth Poetry Prize, the Welsh International Poetry Prize, the New Guard/Knightville Poetry Prize and the Montreal International Poetry Prize.
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
