16 December 2008

Arts fellows, ACT Book of the year, ACT Poetry prizes

| johnboy
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Our Chiefly Arts Minister has decreed that “Local composer Dr Ruth Lee Martin and musician and lyricist Peter J Casey have been named 2009 Creative Arts Fellows”.

Each fellowship is worth $45,000, which is not a vast amount to try and live on.

With his arts hat firmly in place The Chief has also announced the ACT Book of the Year and the the poetry prize winners.

Tony Kevin won ACT Book of the year with “Walking the Camino: a modern pilgrimage to Santiago”. He’d previously won it in 2005 with a book about Mr. Stanhope’s pet subject, SIEV X.

The ACT Poetry prizes have mostly been won by interstaters. (I’m sure someone can explain why this is a useful thing)

Paul Cliff is the sole local poet to get even a mention (Commended) in the serious awards out of 20 odd out-of towners.

Of interest to Canberra is the $2,000 David Campbell Prize for an unpublished poem by an ACT poet:

    Winner:
    Dr Danijela Kambaskovic-Sawers – ‘A Migrant Writer on a Bus (Thinking of Kundera)’

    Commended:
    — Dr Elizabeth Lawson – ‘On the Undoing of Buttons’
    — Dr Paul Magee – ‘Like words laid down in sleep’

    Short-list:
    — Lesley Lebkowicz – ‘The Spy, Volodya Petrov, leaves his home…’
    — Moya Pacey – ‘The Wardrobe’
    — Geoff Page – ‘Dancing in a Paper Hat’
    — Maggie Shapley – ‘Changdeokgung’

Looks like one needs a doctorate to write award winning poetry.

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Peter and I were best friends during high school. Good luck to him!!!

Each fellowship is worth $45,000, which is not a vast amount to try and live on.

That may be true, if you didn’t already have paying day jobs as, say, senior lecturing at the School of Music or presenting on ABC radio.

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