We are delighted to announce that the winners of this year’s contest with the theme of The Bush are:
1st prize Cassandra Arnold, To Map a Myth
2nd prize Roxeena Bidgood, Bush Pastoral
3rd Richenda Rudman, The Pioneer
Our judge, Melissa Watts made these comments in general:
It has been a pleasure to read the entries for the 2024 Martha Richardson Memorial Poetry Prize. In Australia, The Bush is a slippery, amorphous term and I was eager to see how each poet would respond to the topic. The competition provided varied responses from references to actual shrubs to ‘the bush’ as a physical location, a theoretical way of life, people who live in regional areas, concerns and issues of regional life. There were also politically-styled poems on climate change and tree clearing. The competition was stylistically varied including sonnets, elegies, couplets, ekphrastic, pastoral and free-verse poems. This wide scope, both stylistically and thematically demonstrated a high quality of work. Thank you to all who entered for the time and dedication put towards your work.
Here are the winning entries in full, with her specific comments after each one.
FIRST PLACE
To Map a Myth, by Cassandra Arnold
The Bush is a myth.
(A whitefella-invader-colonialist-construct.)
Not quite
as distant as
the outback
but still hauntingly coloured outside the lines
for our office drones and Uber drudges.
A vast cultural backyard copper,
it will boil up your longings and dreams,
send them back to you in a scented stream to condense
in no-salt-tears on the bleak/bleached fabric of your days.
To the settlers/squatters
it was untouched (unearned) wealth: terra nullius
where man-the-hunter-and-tamer could wield the axe of progress,
cut away invisible histories, sow a crop of copied names:
Gloucester Newcastle Stroud Brighton
Adelaide Augusta Bacchus Marsh Melbourne
Clinging to lost safeties/customs, scared/scarred strangers
stamped old impressions on (their) new-claimed land.
The Bush. Like Easter and Christmas,
the phrase comes laden with glamour and baubles.
Host of picnics, summer camps, barbeques,
it is rendered both small and huge in your block-sized life.
Old charts show
nothingness
undifferentiated space
a place to get lost in
to die in
to blame
The inhabitants knew differently.
Know its seasons, harvests, shelters, risks.
Know its stories and promises.
(Already grieve its stolen future.)
The Bush.
Mutter it with me one last time, lips curved in an ironic smile.
Myths are not always maps after all.
Comments from Melissa:
“The Bush is a myth. Full Stop.
From the first line of this poem, we are challenged. This first-person perspective is not a gentle invitation to a debate but rather a statement with no way out. This does not mean, however, that the poem is combative. The line spacing feeds beautifully back into the cartographic title, creating a pace in which to reflect, to luxuriate within the poetic form to allow the reader to think and consider. Unlike our ‘block-sized’, lives this poem creates a sense of scale with The Bush as a place of erased histories and copied histories. Asa place of ‘picnics, summer camps and barbeques’ but also a ‘place to get lost in/to die in/ to blame.’
The poem makes strong use of poetic devices. There is a beautiful use of assonance and strong imagery, in particular in the italicized stanzas. Certain phraseology made me stop and re-read. I particularly like ‘hauntingly coloured outside the lines’, ‘sow a crop of copied names’, and the idea of a block-sized life.’ I also admire the accomplished use of punctuation, particularly hyphens, slashes and brackets to further arguments and images.
Finally, the last line made me wonder – had I been led down the garden path? Did I fully understand the argument? This poem had me thinking long after I read it, which is a sign of a proficient poet with a masterful poem.”
SECOND PLACE
Bush Pastoral, by Roxeena Bidgood
Fading into landscapes
of repetitive days.
Oh! remember to look outside
the habitual eyeline.
It takes a glance, just one to the side
and focus exhales to expand into
vistas beyond the linear.
And you are there, forming
from paddock’s limb
long and slender in curve of hip
and thigh of broken and unbroken
swathes of green and husk-dry grassland.
While branches bend and sway
with leaf-shed tears that fall on earth-skin
dry and curl in organic layers
to become food for trees.
Where memory threads
are strung out on morning dew-clad
strands of spider web.
Nod and bounce tiptoe tightrope walker
of yellow puffs against green
and silver light beyond gold.
That dull illusive shine
caught in transit between trunk
and trunk. One slight dip in the skin
below shoulder blade and the nape
of an elegant neck curving up to
cascades of gold woven with branches
dominating negative spaces
filled with light.
And you are there, a slanting light
to fetch silence slow as indrawn breath
and cry out in windblown heights
of sky-clad ceilings brushed by
scattered fringing and spirit-fingered
reaching of unclad branches.
With fingers gnarled by wisdom
reaching, to tap a shoulder
to tap and capture
vistas beyond the linear.
Comments from Melissa:
“This poem prompts its readers to look beyond our ‘habitual eyelines’ and ‘expand into vistas beyond the linear’ to avoid fading ‘into landscapes of repetitive days’. And what a prompt it is. The poem continues to deliver to the reader the type of beauty and peace that can be found when we look towards the bush. Full of imagery, I can see the bushland forming from a wide view at the ‘paddock’s limb’ to the minute view of ‘dew-clad strands of spider web.’ It’s impossible to rush this poem. The density of imagery makes us travel slowly as we take in colour (where the poet has so beautifully blended colour with light and shine), shape (curves, negative spaces and slanting light), and sound. I felt that the ‘you’ in this poem could have referred to The Bush, a single tree, a spirit or ancestral being, or God. This ambiguity made the poem more interesting and changing as I read and re-read the work.”
THIRD PLACE
The Pioneer, by Richenda Rudman
Inspired by Frederick McCubbin’s painting, The Pioneer (1904)
Wistfully, a woman gazes through bush
at the brindle girths of trees like ogres in her mother’s tales.
And the greens of leavesolive and sage, so dense
she can barely catch the bold sky winking,
as if to say, these trees are for taming.
Cleverness, she thinks, watching creatures scratch the earth;
they are subjects of their sovereign tree,
whose roots and shade commune to feed
and grow all in their dominion.
She is remembering the darkness she’s walked before
the broken promises of emerald farms, their yield
nought but the shredded people in shredded clothes,
scratching the earth for seeds, for moss.
Toil on toil, the bush is cleared
for the sun’s sceptre to bless a garden,
for its body parts to make a house,
for a child to be born.
Tree by tree, the bush is sacrificed
for harvests of crops and clusters of buildings.
A man crouches before a rough wooden cross;
it marks the place
that beds the body, which rests and rots and feeds the bush
To grow and be cut down again,
in this duopoly of life and death.
Comments from Melissa:
“As I read the title of this poem I was aware that the poem referred to the famous triptych of the same name. However, I decided to use my first reading of the poem detached from my (foggy) memory of the artwork to consider if the poem worked on its own. I believe that it did that. This poem provides a third-person perspective of a woman in the bush and her personal history, traumatic and dark. Juxtaposed with the unnamed woman’s narrative is the personification of the natural world, bright and colourful – the ‘bold sky winking/as if to say, these trees are for taming’ the ‘sovereign tree’, ‘the sun’s sceptre to bless a garden’ and the bush’s ‘body parts to make a house’. The second part of the poem introduces a man crouching before a grave. Again the juxtaposition of human and bush builds to the poem’s final couplet, reminding us that like the bush we will ‘grow and be cut down again/in this duopoly of life and death.’ As a final note I’d like to add that upon reading the poem with the artwork (which is, of course, the purpose of ekphrastic poetry) I felt that the two artworks complemented each other, with the poem encouraging the reader to consider the unseen within the painting.”
Congratulations again to the winners, and to all of you who submited such quality work.