In issue 173, it is our privilege to publish some of the best poets writing in Australia today. For almost three decades, this prize has been rewarding superb writing, with the judges reading all entries – almost 500 this year – without knowing the names or biographical details of the poets. Congratulations to Georgina Woods, this year’s winner. This issue also features the first of our new series of graphic narratives: you’ll see one in every issue of Island for the next four years. Thank you to editor Joshua Santospirito for reviewing this year’s pitches and selecting four excellent comics, with our first coming from an emerging Tasmanian artist. And welcome to our new Arts Features Editor, Tamzen Brewster, who has built on the curatorship of previous editor, Judith Abell, while taking things in a subtle but exciting new direction. You might also notice our layout has taken a subtle but exciting new direction – we’d love to know what you think.

A few months into 2025 and Australian writers are grappling with what it means to be a political artist, whether creating work about the issues that matter to you means opting out of funding, means giving up on any kind of paid career. There’s talk that art should bring Australians together, but asking questions about how Australia should be, about how Australia can be better, is always going to cause conflict. Is there any art that brings all Australians together? Only by shutting up the Australians who it excludes. Thank you to everyone who contributed to this issue with their art, so much of which pulls apart what’s going wrong, what could be better, what we need to fight for.

— Jane Rawson, Managing Editor

Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize Judges’ report

This year poets Amy Crutchfield and John Kinsella joined me, Kate Middleton, in judging the Gwen Harwood poetry prize. Each of us read the full range of poems entered. We compiled personal longlists, then a shared longlist. Over several discussions this longlist of more than 30 poems became the shortlist of 12 poems published here. A useful point of our discussion came when we turned towards the qualities of poems that yielded more to us over the course of a month. Among the criteria we considered in these poems were ambition, innovation, musicality and striking, image-loaded language. A shorthand we returned to was the idea of ‘lift’: that in the reading of the poem we experienced that sensation of lifting out of ourselves as readers, of being ourselves transformed.

 The winning poem, ‘Augury: sea surface temperature charts’ by Georgina Woods, is quiet and controlled on its surface, but like the charts it invokes, unsettled and unsettling, containing heights and depths; the gannets of the poem, ‘range wide’ while the ‘pilchards ply deep water’. ‘Augury’ addresses weighty subject matter: changes in sea surface temperature point to large and alarming changes in our world. Woods uses the chart itself – the line that ‘ravels from the record’ – to draw the poem’s form (which begins to fray in its final lines) and to draw us into a world both oceanic and avian. She recalls the origin of the word ‘augury’ in the interpretation of the behaviours of birds and reminds us that this observation is not mystical – indeed, that ‘the auspices are turbulent’. At times the poem is plainspoken as a news report (‘Many thousand penguin chicks / are drowned’) while returning to a language that is ‘lucent’ in its warning.

 We selected two poems as runners up. Julie Janson’s ‘My Kaathii Sister’ is a remarkable poem that opens the scenes of life among the Nyemba people in and around Bourke in the 1970s. Each stanza is rich with detail, unfolding like a movie as we see the ‘Reserve mob’ and ‘outcasts from town’ alongside nuns riding bicycles wearing ‘long blue saris’ in a place that is removed from us by half a century. This poem weaves narrative, dramatic and lyrical language with power and deftness.

 Audrey Molloy’s ‘Cold Water Swimming in Lyme Regis’ is a poem of gorgeous language and image. Written in conversation with John Fowles’s novel The French Lieutenant’s Woman, this is deeply lyrical poem conjures the gasp of that plunge into cold water, taking the reader from the ‘flounce of dulse and tangle’ of entry to water to the ‘briny spangles’ of the poem’s end.

 In our shortlist we looked for work that brought us continued reward, sparked by the urgency of belonging to a particular place and time, and that displayed work by a range of exciting contemporary poets.

— Kate Middleton, Poetry Editor

For the first issue of 2025, a year that feels like it is going to be consequential for many, our stories intersect on themes of both steadfastness and seeking. In Jennifer Kremmer’s strange and funny Dogs, a loyal trio haunt the roads in search of something we once took for granted, and in the beautiful and precise Abscission by Tehnuka, a student far from home contends with the difference and the wonder of her own body. In An oral history of piracy, a moving and rhythmic piece by Lars Rogers, two young people cleave together, permanently, while in Sean Macgillicuddy’s surprising and wise The fourth wall, a child observes the uneasy gender dynamics and the shifting loyalties of their family. In The Un-doing by Sharleigh Crittenden, a story both painful and delicate, a grandmother navigates extremes of grief and loss with a steady look into the heart of things.

— Kate Kruimink, Fiction Editor

The pieces in this issue seem locked in a tug of war between binary positions: community and isolation, public and private, excess and economy. In A fabrication, Fiona Wright stitches together a stunning essay on familial lineage, community connection, and the experience of a body in time, while Dorothy Fauls takes us through the experience of leaving a cloistered religious community to find her footing and sense of self in There is a child with ash on her hands. Roumina Parsa’s ruminations on the holiday season might leave you feeling bloated, hungover and despondent in ’tis the damn season to eat and be eaten, and Oliver Shaw’s childlike observations reveal the complex relationship between family and place in The blue house. Finally, Rose Michael, Sharon Mullins, Katherine Day and Renée Otmar give us a rare insight into the emotions, ethics and politics of professional editing in Editing as is creative practice.

— Keely Jobe, Nonfiction Editor

First Nations artist Danny Gardner’s burnt-etched wallaby hides portray stories passed to him by his cultural Elders. Danny’s freehand imagery embodies his personal expression of these vital cultural stories he holds, respects and shares. Laura Purcell’s works are ever-engaging: their form and texture act to extend our physical and psychological parameters, speaking to a visceral methodology which connects us to deep subliminal inner workings. Rodrigo Lopez shares vibrant works inspired by his time spent in Lutruwita/Tasmania over the last two years, a joyous, wondrous and rich journey into self in deep connection with ‘all’. And I chat to photographer, visual ethnographer and podcaster Tim Butcher for a deep dive into his creative path.

— Tamzen Brewster, Arts Features Editor

Emanata: a cartooning technique that uses lines, squiggles, or symbols to indicate a character's emotions. An example of this could be the rays of happiness beaming from our smug faces: good news folks, comics are being published across the next four issues. Alex Poljansek’s ‘Openings’ explores the dynamics of hierarchical kudos in art scenes that try to serve the need of artists to develop their craft in the full view of their community. Comics have for many years been out in the cold when it comes to the community of litmags so I’m very glad that Island is emitting warm beams of smug hope. 

— Joshua Santospirito, Graphic Narratives Editor