Cirrus@Austlit

'A brief and unscientific survey of prizes in Australia had equally unsurprising results. From the Premier’s Awards in Victoria and New South Wales to the Newcastle Poetry Prize to the Josephine Ulrich or the Anne Elder Awards, among others, my list mirrors Fulton’s. Needless to say this is not a consciously racist exclusion, but a structural problem in Australian letters. Samuel Wagan Watson and Ali Cobby Eckermann, both Indigenous poets, won the NSW Book of the Year and the Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize, in 2005 and 2013 respectively. But in the awards I looked at they seem to be the only exceptions, especially of high profile poets who identify as non-white. That is only two out of a possible 120. As for the judges, it may be close to a clean sweep – after all you are hardly going to be called on as a judge unless you have won an award or two yourself.'