It’s a joy to bring you the winning poems in this year’s Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize. Congratulations to Stuart Barnes, John Foulcher and Andrew Sutherland – and many thanks to our judges. In this issue, as well as our selection of excellent fiction, nonfiction and arts features, we also include two Tasmanian special features: nine poems from the ‘More Than Human Poetry Project’; and creative responses to Tasmania’s maritime history from the LUME residency. At the time of printing this issue, the news was of war in Ukraine, devastating floods in Queensland and New South Wales, and the ‘grave and mounting’ threat of climate change evident in the sixth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Against such a backdrop, Kristen Lang’s words introducing the ‘More Than Human Poetry Project’ resonate so powerfully: the poems ‘reflect a sincerity given, by these poets, amid an almost ungraspable pain – the conflict and loss that is the current and threatened future state of the planet. The parallel hope can be as difficult to hold on to, though it is certainly present.’
(Publication abstract)