Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry
Subcategory of Ockham New Zealand Book Awards
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Latest Winners / Recipients

Year: 2024

winner y separately published work icon Chinese Fish Grace Yee , Artarmon : Giramondo Publishing , 2023 26023166 2023 single work novel

'A family saga narrated in multiple voices and laced with archival fragments and scholarly interjections, Chinese Fish offers an intimate glimpse into the lives of women and girls in a community that has historically been characterised as both a ‘yellow peril’ menace and an exotic ‘model minority’.'(Publication summary)

Year: 2022

winner y separately published work icon Tumble Joanna Preston , Dunedin : University of Otago Press , 2021 25091779 2021 selected work poetry

'In tumble, Joanna Preston’s bold and original voice swoops the reader from the ocean depths to the roof of the world, from nascent saints, Viking raids and fallen angels to talking cameras and an astronaut in space.

'This beautifully crafted collection traverses the lyric, free verse and traditional forms. It’s earthy and embodied, while at the same time woven through with myth and magical realism. Always, the human heartbeat is at stake, as Preston explores love, loss, longing and lust – how we stumble, how we soar.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

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