Sarah Holland-Batt wins the 2023 Colin Roderick Literary Award
Congratulations to Sarah Holland-Batt who won the 2023 Colin Roderick Literary Award for her collection, The Jaguar.
The Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award is one of Australia's oldest and esteemed literary awards, founded in 1967 by Professor Colin Roderick, an Australian writer, editor, academic and educator. The winning book, published in Australia in the previous calendar year, must deal with 'any aspect of Australian life.'
Juding panel chair Alan Lawson says,
‘It’s rare for a volume of poetry to be so coherent: it functions as a complete whole, a volume not just a collection. The Jaguar is astonishing for its use of rhetorical, poetic and metaphoric language to convey strong, sometimes searing and sometimes intimate emotions. Holland-Batt almost overwhelms us as she uses every poetic tool at her disposal to come to terms with her grief.’
This $30,000 prize was awarded to Sarah at a special ceremony at James Cook University's Bebegu Yumba Campus, Friday 6 October.