And the winner is …

Stephen Edgar has won the inaugural ABR Poetry Prize with his poem ‘Man on the Moon’. The three judges, Morag Fraser, Peter Rose and Peter Steele, were impressed by the overall quality of the entries and were pleased to be able to choose from such a strong short list, but the final decision was quick and unanimous because of the formal and imaginative qualities of Stephen Edgar’s poem. He receives $2000, and ‘Man on the Moon’ reappears on page 13. Elsewhere in the magazine, we publish the two poems that received honourable mentions (by Judith Bishop and Lisa Gorton). ABR also apologises to Mark Tredinnick, and our readers, for the ludicrous break that somehow infiltrated his villanelle ‘Ubirr Rock’, which we published with the other short-listed works in the previous issue.

The level of sculpture

Stephen Edgar’s latest book of poems is Lost in the Foreground (Duffy & Snellgrove, 2003). Acclaiming this in our ‘Best Books of 2003’ column, Clive James praised ‘the full impact of [Edgar’s] craftsmanship, which is like carpentry raised to the level of sculpture’. As we know, Duffy & Snellgrove is no more, but ABR understands that Michael Duffy will continue to supply Lost in the Foreground for some years. Happily, but not surprisingly, Stephen Edgar has found a publisher for his new collection: Black Pepper will issue Other Summers in 2006.