Jazz Money's anticipated new collection 'mark the dawn' wins the UQP Quentin Bryce Award

UQP is excited to announce that the 2024 recipient of the UQP Quentin Bryce Award, is Jazz Money’s much-anticipated poetry collection, mark the dawn. Money’s second collection, mark the dawn, will be published in August 2024 and has already garnered praise.

mark the dawn is simply stunning and Jazz effortlessly pulls me through to the next, and next astounding poem. I love the intelligence of Jazz Money. — Alexis Wright

mark the dawn is Blak, queer, campfire poetry, pages ablaze. From its daybreak opening poems until the last page, Jazz Money’s second collection is multiverse, tender and exquisite. — Anne-Marie Te Whiu

These poems reveal life in every line, bound by indomitable truth: language and being are indivisible from country, and all its wonder, complexity, beauty, constant ephemerality. mark the dawn is a (living) book of gentle, visceral masterpieces. — Sara M Saleh

Jazz Money’s second book is not so much a collection of poetry as a conjuration, a sentient document of Freshwater metaphysics. Do not mistake this language for English, nor this as a work of Australian literature: it is Wiradjuri literature, the source-code of Country pulsing through every riparian beat and curve. It is a Wiradjuri blade that cuts these swift grooves into the coloniser’s tongue, a Wiradjuri weaver who dextrously fashions this vessel for your weariness, Wiradjuri eros that kindles this cleansing smoke, Wiradjuri love that animates every syllable and sings your queer Blak bones into their sovereign vibration. Read this work aloud in one long exhalation: may this current carry you where you need to go. — SJ Norman

The award recognises The Honourable Dame Quentin Bryce, who is an alumna of The University of Queensland and was the first woman appointed as a faculty member of its Law School. From 2003 to 2008 she served as the twenty-fourth Governor of Queensland, and from 2008 to 2014 she was the twenty-fifth Governor General of Australia, the first woman to hold the office. Throughout her career Quentin Bryce has been a strong supporter of the arts and Australia’s cultural life, and she is an ambassador for many related organisations, including the Indigenous Literacy Foundation and the Stella Prize.

To honour Quentin Bryce’s impressive career and legacy, University of Queensland Press established the UQP Quentin Bryce Award in 2020. The award recognises one book on UQP’s list each year that celebrates women’s lives and/or promotes gender equality.

Of selecting mark the dawn from UQP’s 2024 list, Dame Quentin Bryce says:

As a long-time reader and lover of poetry I was delighted to be able to select a work of poetry as the UQP Quentin Bryce Award recipient for 2024. Jazz Money’s second collection, mark the dawn, is a moving, joyful and life-affirming work that shines with love for her Country, her people and the power of community to connect and embrace us. This is a book I will return to again and again, for solace, for inspiration and for a line or two to share with others.

On winning the award Jazz Money says:

I am so delighted and honoured that mark the dawn has received the 2024 UQP Quentin Bryce Award. To connect with readers is the truest delight of being a writer, and I am very grateful to learn that this book is already beginning to connect and resonate. mark the dawn joins the remarkable previous winners of the UQP Quentin Bryce Award and it is a great privilege to sit in their company. Thank you to The Honourable Dame Quentin Bryce and UQP for celebrating the voices of women and writers promoting gender equity.

Congratulations to Jazz Money.