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Portraits of Drowning
by Madeleine Dale

From the 2023 winner of the Thomas Shapcott Prize for Poetry comes a beguiling collection.

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Overview

I was thinking of wild things and what we make of them.

Portraits of Drowning is lyric poetry at its best. In these rich and varied poems, Madeleine Dale reveals water as the lifeblood of our ecosystems but also our imaginations, energising romance and tragedy, and troubling history and myth. Sustaining eye and ear, heart and mind, this is a debut of exceptional quality and skill.

Details

Awards

Philip Neilsen

‘Portraits of Drowning is a superbly crafted fusion of rich language, inventiveness, intellect, wit, and deep empathy – for the fragility and strength of nature, and the solitary swimmer.’

Thomas Shapcott Judges

‘Portraits of Drowning is a book of exquisite skill and polish. This is lyric poetry at its best.’

Shastra Deo

‘At once prophecy and postmortem, Portraits of Drowning delineates what is lost in the deluge, and what is found. This is a poetry of myth and history, hunger and glut – where bodies want for bodies, where water wants for baptism and burial.’

Bronwyn Lea

‘Madeleine Dale invites readers to contemplate a poetics of drowning in which memories surface, hazards submerge, and bodies sink breathlessly into depths of longing. This is the landmark debut I’ve been waiting for.’

Madeleine Dale

Madeleine Dale grew up on Tamborine Mountain and now lives in Brisbane/Meanjin. She holds First Class Honours, a Master of Philosophy and a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Queensland. Her first chapbook, On Fire with Dangerous Cargo, was published by Queensland Poetry in 2023. Portraits of Drowning, her first full-length collection, won the 2023 Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize, the 2024–25 Five Islands Poetry Prize, and was commended for the 2025 Wesley Michel Wright Prize.