Caselberg Trust International Poetry Prize 2018 - winners announced

Posted: Thursday Nov 15, 2018

The winners of the 2018 Caselberg Trust International Poetry Prize have been announced. The competition is now in its eight year, and this year’s competition was judged by Dunedin poet David Eggleton.

First place went to ‘you can’t be here’ by Derek Schulz of Kapiti, and ‘Full Measure’ by Tony Beyer of Taranaki was placed second. The winner receives $500 and a week’s stay at the Caselberg House. The second placed poet receives $250. Both poems and the judges report will be published in November in Landfall 236.

The four Highly Commended entries were “Oh! Kee-o Kee-o” and “Memorial” by Janet Newman (Horowhenua), “The Castle” by Sarah Scott (Wellington), and “A Country Airing” by Ruth Arnison (Dunedin). Their poems, along with the two winning entries and the judges report, will be published on the Caselberg Trust website in late November (www.caselbergtrust.org)

Judge David Eggleton said of Schulz’s winning poem “The poem ‘you can’t be here’ has a quicksilvery radiance; it’s like some febrile emanation of human consciousness itself. I applaud the wit and vividness of its dream-like scenario. In its zaniness and absurdity, it’s a kind of distillation of our current cultural condition, making it up as we go along in a just-in-time manner”

and he noted that “Evanescent, spun out of thin air, it generates its own force-field; it lifts you up – and puts you down in a different place to where you were before”.

Derek Schulz’s work has appeared in Landfall, Sport, New Zealand Listener, Art NZ, and Architecture NZ among other publications, and his essay on Janet Frame “Secrets” appeared in the last edition of Landfall (Landfall 235).

Tony Beyer’s “Anchor Stone” (Cold Hub Press), was a finalist in the poetry category of the 2018 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. New work has appeared this year in broadsheet, Landfall, Otoliths and Poetry Pacific.