‘I tried to take notes and wrap a narrative around all these events, to find parallels by way of allegory, to satirise the process itself as I went, allowing the march of 2022 to dictate the progress of the book. It was much more of an experimental process than I imagined, and it took a lot of work to bring it into some kind of order.’

Watch a recording or read a transcription of Fogarty’s acceptance speech, as well as a new poem, ‘Earth writes back to forward’.

‘I feel deeply honoured and really humbled to receive this award,’ Wright told ABC Arts of her Lifetime Achievement award. ‘But I also want to say, I’m not finished yet. I’ve got a lot more writing to come.’

Write the judges: ‘Praiseworthy is simply astonishing’; ‘Harvest Lingo offers a sovereign alternative to standard ways of poetic thinking and reading.’

‘Timor-Leste celebrated its twentieth anniversary as an independent nation in 2022. A new generation is writing their story now, with the future as a destination for hopes and dreams. It can be a happier ending. Let’s help with that.’ 

‘This book is not named for an imaginary figure from myth, or a character consigned to history, but rather the force she represents. A force which persists – fierce, intractable and undiminished.’

‘Open, the coffin shocked me. / I had thought that we were more disposed to keep things hidden. / Thought – I did not tick this box? / In any case, you looked well’

‘Chinese Fish is a brilliantly devised, comic feat of cultural resistance; a fantastically polyphonic verse novel majoring in riotously funny and heartbreaking ways, the minoritised experience of three generations of a Chinese family, who in the 1960s migrate from Hong Kong to Aotearoa / New Zealand, or, as white Australians hypocritically used to joke, the land of the wrong white crowd.’

‘We all grew up communicating in this hybrid language that we later couldn’t teach or hand down to our own children, because it was so make-shift, transitional…I am very happy to have written a little of it down now for posterity, in this book.’

‘AMERICA: I’m arranging (and re-arranging) my poems for you! I hope your hotels are cheap & your “ears” are open!’

‘I never thought I’d write a novel. But it’s the writing habit that I built up by keeping a diary, together with the help and encouragement of my beloved Tanvir Ahmed Chowdhury, my publisher and friend Bratya Raisu, and my friend Monzurul Ahsan Olee that led to the completion of the original, Bengali version of this novel called Hospital.’

‘Rushdi argues that there is not always one way to treat those with mental health issues. We, as a society, must do our utmost to approach and treat people in the way that is best for them. We must offer understanding and inclusion.’

‘You waited for me to turn up and then when I did/we said yes to each other almost immediately/and the roof disappeared from your Lotus Elise/the sky so ecstatically blue/every pop tune a hymn.’

‘I see lyric poetry as humanity’s first recording device, one that can capture the sound of a person’s voice, as well as their aliveness. I’m also interested in poetry’s archival capabilities, which is why many of these poems include references specific to my suburban upbringing. I feel lucky to have grown up in a time when our gods were pop stars, singing songs of praise and lament to teenage girls; themselves gods.’ 

‘Oh, look! There’s so and so, said the author (it was the editor of the national literary papers). I could see a review in his eyes. Recognising me, his face frowned thoughtfully in critique. But he passed on. Phew, said the author, and I felt her breath on the hairs of my forearm. My forearm moving across the page!’

‘ I was interested in what happens when someone grows too big for the space society allocates them. I kept hearing my grandmother telling me I was getting, Too big for my boots.’