Otago poets praised at prestigious International awards

By University of Otago | Posted: Wednesday Oct 30, 2024

Two University of Otago alumni have won awards in the prestigious Laurel Prize for poetry.

Otago poets praised at prestigious International awards | University of Otago

Established by UK Poet Laureate Simon Armitage, the Laurel Prize honours the best collections of nature or environmental poetry published each year. This year’s prize was judged by renowned poets Mona Arshi (Chair), Caroline Bird and Kwame Dawes.

Robyn Maree Pickens, who recently completed a PhD on reparative ecopoetics at Otago, was awarded third place for her collection, Tung. The judges praised Robyn’s work as "an antidote to apathy", highlighting that it "doesn’t just use language to reflect the world, the language is the world".

"The language melts, the language erodes and grows and shimmers with unexpected glory. Even statistics and temperatures written down become something bodily that can be felt within the body and within the bodies of the poems themselves. Nothing is other or distant. We have atmospheric rivers in our knees, we have them in the corners of our mouths, and a human is a hole for the sun and a ball of breath for the trees, and reading is experiential like the elements."

Megan Kitching, also an Otago alumna and former staff member in the English Department, received the Best International First Collection award for At the Point of Seeing. The judges commended her collection for "its lively and inquisitive engagement with the natural world", noting that "her lyric sensibility and her acutely captured sense of place are the strongest features of this remarkable first book".

At the Point of Seeing also won the Jesse Mackay Award for Best First Book in the 2024 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards earlier this year.

Both collections were published in 2023 by Otago University Press.

*Otago University Press and the Dunedin UNESCO City of Literature will co-host an author talk about eco-poetry and poetry reading evening with Robyn and Megan on Friday 29 November at the Dunningham Suite in the Dunedin Public Library.