Jarad Bruinstroop wins 2024 Five Islands Poetry Prize
We are very excited to announce that Jarad Bruinstroop has won the 2024 Five Islands Press Poetry Award for his collection Reliefs.
In this striking debut, Jarad Bruinstroop offers a frank and tender exploration of Queer history, art, beauty and pain. These poems delight in the audacious power of vulnerability and the revolutionary potential of Queer joy. With skill and wit, Bruinstroop plumbs the manifold pleasures of language in search of connection, transcendence and home.
By bearing witness to the lives of Queer people past and present, Reliefs celebrates the resilience of the desiring body and pulses with renewed possibilities.
Five Islands Press provide an annual prize that supports emerging poets and honours the publishers who have shown confidence in new poets.
Unique among literary awards, this prize for a first book of poetry includes a cash prize for the publisher as well as the chosen poet.
As many readers and poets know, Five Islands Press was a prominent independent Australian poetry publishing house for thirty-four years, from 1986 until 2007 under the direction of Ron Pretty, then until 2020 under a changing team of editors who kept the press going strongly.
We would also like to congratulate Sara Saleh who was shortlisted and commended for her collection The Flirtation of Girls / Ghazal el-Banat
Huge congratulations to Jarad!