'Named in honour of a distinguished Queensland poet, the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize for an Unpublished Manuscript is committed to encouraging emerging Queensland poets. Now in its 17th year, this prestigious prize for an unpublished poetry manuscript comes with total prize money of $2,000 and a publishing contract. This prize is funded by Arts Queensland and supported by (University of Queensland Press) UQP.' (https://queenslandpoetryfestival.com/awards/thomas-shapcott-poetry-prize/)
'From Sri Lankan-Australian poet Janaka Malwatta, a superb collection that directs its imagining towards a just future for the next generation.
'This is a work of activism, fury and hope. Its urgent and purposeful poems contribute to the dismantling of racism, raging against its machinery. It combines performance poetry with poetries of witness and memory, recounting personal experiences of racism as well as historic injustices.
'The coherence of this collection comes from the incandescent rage that burns from the first poem to the last. Yet there is a measure of compassion here, a compassion that is able to register contradiction and complexity without passing judgement. Ultimately this superb collection directs its imagining towards a just future for the next generation.' (Publication summary)
'From the 2020 winner of the Thomas Shapcott Award comes a sophisticated, impressive and rich collection of poetry that unpacks the complexity of family, grief, and cross-cultural and queer identity.
'These richly allusive poems weigh violence and tenderness, wound and cure, history and future. Boldly and tenderly, they balance loss and gain, adventure and quiet, as they hum to one another of love and loss. This is a scintillating and exhilarating collection from an accomplished and distinctive new voice.' (Publication summary)