At the Altar of Touch wins at the 2023 VPLAs

UQP are thrilled to announce that Gavin Yuan Gao's At the Altar of Touchhas won the 2023 Prize for Poetry at the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. The news was announced last night at a ceremony hosted by The Wheeler Centre.

Congratulations to Gavin on this richly deserved recognition of a tender and exhilarating debut poetry collection.

Judges' comments:

Gavin Yuan Gao’s deeply moving debut crosses countries, languages, memories and themes with undeniable grace and skill. From the Kahlo-like portrait of its opening poem to the requiem of its closing, At the Altar of Touch is both capacious in its philosophical explorations and intimate in its invitation to readers. Lucid and lyrical, this is a work that demands conscious attention, both for its command of language and imagery and the sheer elegance of its execution. Consistently restrained yet irresistible and memorably elegiac, there are glimmers of hope(fulness) in its poems about family, loss, heartbreak, history and erasure.