Mary Gilmore Award for a First Book of Poetry (1985-)
or Mary Gilmore Award ; or Dame Mary Gilmore Medal
Subcategory of ASAL Awards
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History

The Trade Unions established a Mary Gilmore Award in 1956 to encourage literature 'significant to the life and aspirations of the Australian People'. In the late 1950s, it was sponsored by the May Day Committees of Newcastle, Melbourne and Sydney. 

Although the award has been given to many kinds of works over the years, it has been exclusively a poetry award since 1985. Until 1999, it was awarded to the best first book of poetry published in the previous calendar year. From 1999 to 2016, it was awarded to the best first book of poetry in the previous two calendar years. Since 2016, it has been awarded to a poet’s first book which contains 32 or more pages of poetry.

It is currently administered by the Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL).

Notes

  • Awards on this page are only for the Mary Gilmore Award for Poetry (post-1985). For previous awards, see the ACTU Dame Mary Gilmore Award.

Latest Winners / Recipients

Year: 2024

winner y separately published work icon Secret Third Thing Dan Hogan , Melbourne : Cordite Press , 2023 26023565 2023 selected work poetry 'What characterises Hogan’s poetry is the way that, each time we come close to fully apprehending the impending collapse of capitalism, we are waylaid by something more urgent and mundane. To be non- binary, as these poems show, is not to just be a secret third thing, it is to bring class consciousness to bear upon gender.' (Publication summary) 

Year: 2023

winner y separately published work icon Leave Me Alone Harry Reid , Melbourne : Cordite Press , 2022 24843214 2022 selected work poetry 'In this debut full-length collection, Harry Reid takes us through the doors of the office to tour its funny, absurd, and at times terrifying, discontents. With sharp eyes and sharp teeth, Reid appropriates and dissembles corporate spaces and corporate language to create a biting portrait, and a subversive poetics, of work and labour in the twenty-first century.' 

(Publication summary)

Year: 2022

winner y separately published work icon In the Room with the She Wolf Jelena Dinic , Mile End : Wakefield Press , 2021 23056542 2021 selected work poetry

'Jelena Dinic came to Australia during the collapse of the war-torn former Yugoslavia and her poems are created from fractured landscapes. Winner of the 2019 Adelaide Festival Unpublished Manuscript Award, this collection beautifully charts the territory where cultures, languages and family life intersect. Dinic publishes in both Serbian and English.'

Source : publication summary

Year: 2021

winner y separately published work icon Breathing Plural Em König , Melbourne : Cordite Press , 2020 19662628 2020 selected work poetry

'As I write this, fires are burning out of control on Kangaroo Island and all along the east coast of Australia. Lives, homes, half a billion animals: gone. As I write this, I am awaiting a blood sunset, the kind that filters the land through a lens of pink, helping everything to complement the colour of my acrylic nails. As I write this, citizens of the USA (and the world) are holding their collective breath awaiting retaliation from the Iranian army in response to the assassination of Qasem Soleimani. As I write this, I can tell the three avocados in the fruit bowl beside me will all ripen tomorrow morning. As I write this, I am wondering if I can afford to renew my gym membership and what will happen to my body if I don’t.

'As I write this, I question the necessity of a poem – written on and with and for atoms, spoken through waves – combustible, ephemeral, biodegradable. Each poem in this book exists in two forms, both inhabiting a unique state of decay or decomposition (perhaps re-composition?). How you choose to engage is entirely up to you. Read this book back to front, front to back, upside down, right way round. Start at the beginning, in the middle; breathe it in one word at a time. Use it as a doorstop, as Tinder, as rolling paper – but read it first if only to revel in its potential/futility.

'–Em König'

(Source: publisher's blurb)

Year: 2020

winner y separately published work icon Carte Blanche Thom Sullivan , Sydney : Vagabond Press , 2019 14815995 2019 selected work poetry

'Thom Sullivan’s debut collection of poems, Carte Blanche, traverses the exactitudes of place and time – from a distinctively Australian suburbia, to farming landscapes in South Australia’s Mount Lofty Ranges, to Australia’s renowned Great Ocean Road, and the interior terrains of consciousness and perception. The poems are memorable, succinct in their expression, precise in their effect, and notable for their innovative use of syntax and punctuation. Carte Blanche is a collection of poems that’s finely realised and keenly felt.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Works About this Award

2002 Mary Gilmore Poetry Prize 2002 single work column
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 1 no. 2002; (p. 112-113)
Includes the judges report on the winning work.
ASAL Literary Awards Robert Dixon , 1998 single work column
— Appears in: Notes & Furphies , October no. 41 1998; (p. 9-10)
ASAL Literary Awards 1995 : The Mary Gilmore Award Catherine Cecilia Pratt , 1995 single work criticism
— Appears in: Notes & Furphies , October no. 35 1995; (p. 17)
Australian Literature: Notes : Literary Awards [Southerly, vol.47 no.4, December 1987] 1987 single work column
— Appears in: Southerly , December vol. 47 no. 4 1987; (p. 464)
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