In 2015 Queensland Poetry Festival (QPF) proudly announced the inaugural Philip Bacon Ekphrasis Award. This new award is named after one of Australia’s premier art dealers, Philip Bacon, who has agreed to be the patron of QPF’s first national ekphrastic prize.The word ekphrasis comes from the Greek ek – ‘out’ – and phrasis – ‘speak’ – as well as the verb ekphrazein, which means to call an inanimate object by name. Artistically, ekphrasis is a rhetorical device in which a visual object, usually a work of art, is vividly described by another artistic medium – in this case, a poem under 12 lines in length. Open to all Australian residents, the inaugural winner received $500 in prize money and the runner-up $250, and the top five poems are published here in partnership with Verity La.
Runner-up: ‘At your table‘ by Adriana Orifici, in response to William Robinson’s Bright sea at Cape Byron, 2007
Shortlisted: ‘Thermodynamic Asymetries’ by Damon O’Brien, in response to Brian Brownhall’s Night arrows; ‘A great gaping hole’ by Sarah Rice, in response to Sidney Nolan’s Deserted miners’ camp, Queensland; ‘There Again’ by Matt Hetherington, in response to Robert Brownhall’s Night arrows
Ian Fairweather – Alligator Creek, Cairns, 1939, oil and gouache on cardboard. 50.7 x 51.6 cm
The Wait (Rosanna Licari)
(after Alligator Creek, Cairns by Ian Fairweather, 1939)
Smear yourself into this country,
and settle near piers, banks
and glassy-eyed pools. Up north,
where the morning smells of South-East Asia
and covers you in sweat.
Then lose focus for a moment
and the landscape becomes batik–
a woman wrapped in blues and greens.
But in the fluid of oil and gouache lie other matters.
The fruit bats hang in trees, fanning themselves
as the reptiles watch patiently
for a fall.
William Robinson – Bright sea at Cape Byron, 2007, oil on linen. 100 x 162 cm
At your table (Adriana Orifici)
(after Bright sea at Cape Byron by William Robinson, 2007)
There is nothing to the start of this day – sand glossy with jellyfish –
That bright sea –
To foretell it is the last time we will see you.
Surfers bob up between yawning waves – others cling like starfish to rocks –
While bush turkeys amble down to the water
And examine the scene with prehistoric eyes.
We are sitting in a house above it all – a desire line cuts a path from our table to the ocean –
You are waxy skinned and stoic
A trembling hand defiantly holds up your knife.
This time should be yours but you talk with sparkling eyes to your children –
You tell them how they grew –
They mirror your weightless calm.
Robert Brownhall – Night arrows, 2014, oil on linen. 80 x 144 cm
Thermodynamic Asymmetries (Damen O’Brien)
(after Night Arrows by Robert Brownhall, 2014)
Your night is a slow shadowless exposure;
an open aperture of observation. Your night
is a hot glow; a phantom after-image
of Brisbane’s long daylight saving-less afternoons.
You’ve found a bomb-tester’s false town façade,
waiting for the pressure wave to hurricane the houses:
ghost streets and ghost cars with their indicators on,
ticking, and ticking like ambivalent radiation.
Your first sketches had a boy running somewhere
but the linen stretches out an empty isotope of evening,
and there is an enfilade of arrows leaving stage left,
giving way to eternity, coming through on the right.
Sidney Nolan – Deserted miners’ camp, Queensland, c.1949, ripolin on hardboard. 62.5 x 75 cm
A great gaping hole (Sarah Rice)
(after Deserted miners’ camp, Queensland, by Sidney Nolan )
There are ghosts in the ground again
As there always are
These two hold each other
and kiss with black-lined lips
A black-bird triangle falls
into its own white mine
A halo hovers
around the swing set
As if it knows the future
is under erasure
And in the middle of it all
an empty door
Robert Brownhall – Night arrows, 2014, oil on linen. 80 x 144 cm
There Again (Matt Hetherington)
(after Night arrows by Robert Brownhall, 2014)
nothing is burning is over
looked like glass the sky is not a limit is
time to pay our last respects to the present
now where is tedium it’s not what was left
behind all the questions pushing it uphill is not
the end of the road or home where you don’t think it
should have been no signs won’t be blanker than mirrors
though how many yawns from dusk to dawn all sleep falls
into it but no lightning in the distance no reason to hide no faces
everywhere you don’t turn just to be on the safe side it says the forbidden is
not hidden like green fire in all the miles of similes the one with the quietest voice
Rosanna Licari is an Australian poet and writer. Her work has won the Thomas Shapcott, the Anne Elder and the Michel Wesley Wright Poetry Prizes, and she has been included in various anthologies including the Best Australian Poems, Idiom 23, fourW: New Writing, Australian Love Poems, and Global Poetry. She won the inaugural Philip Bacon Ekphrasis Award in 2015. Website: www.rosannalicari.com
Adriana Orifici is a Melbourne-based legal researcher, writer and mother. She holds honours degrees in Law and Arts, majoring in History and Creative Writing. Her legal writing has appeared in professional periodicals and journals including the Law Institute Journal while her creative writing has appeared in Overland.
Damen O’Brien is a Queensland poet, living in Wynnum. He is currently working as a Senior Contracts Manager for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle company, which is much less exciting than it sounds (if at all). Damen has been published in Cordite and Mascara, and has won or been highly commended in the Yeats Poetry Prize, the Nillumbik Ekphrasis Poetry Award, in the Ipswich Poetry Festival, The Redlands Poetry Prize, and the FAW Tasmania Poetry Prize.
Sarah Rice won the 2014 Ron Pretty, 2014 Bruce Dawe, and co-won the 2013 Writing Ventures and 2011 Gwen Harwood poetry prizes. Publications include: Those Who Travel (art-book of poetry, prints by Patsy Payne, Ampersand Duck, 2010), Global Poetry Anthology, Award Winning Australian Writing, Best Australian Poetry, The House is Not Quiet and the World is Not Calm: Poetry from Canberra, Island, Southerly and Australian Poetry Journal.
Matt Hetherington is a writer, DJ, and teacher living in Brisbane. He has been writing haiku for over 25 years, and has published four poetry collections and over 300 poems. His first all-haiku/senryu collection For Instance was published in March by Mulla Mulla Press. He is also on the board of the Australian Haiku Society https://www.haikuoz.org/