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10 July, 2024

Cloncurry's prestigious poetry prize heading south

A Melbourne woman has claimed the $10,000 cheque.

By North West Weekly

Cloncurry's prestigious poetry prize heading south - feature photo

A personal ode to the vast red dirt of the Outback has won the prestigious 2024 Cloncurry Poetry Prize.

Melbourne-based Imogen Batt-Doyle was last week announced the winner against hundreds of entries with her poem Larapinta (Red Dirt Dreaming) which embraced this year’s theme, Standing on the Shoulders of Giants, by reflecting on the Dreamtime, the spirits that roam the Outback and her personal connections to the land.

Though Imogen could not be present for the award ceremony, she was thrilled to learn she was the winner and would receive $10,000 in prize money.

A double celebration was held by Imogen and her sister, Isobel Batt-Doyle, who found out the same day she would be representing Australia at the Paris Olympics in the 5000m athletics event.

An outdoor educator, Imogen said she spent the past three years writing the poem, drafting, adding and editing while she was guiding groups along the Larapinta Trail (which she has walked 42 times), west of Alice Springs.

The winner was announced by Cloncurry Shire Council mayor Greg Campbell on the banks of Chinaman Creek Dam. He said Australia’s cultural signature, and particularly that in the Outback, was inked by the muses of poets.

“There are few that don’t recognise the names Dorothea Mackellar, Banjo Paterson, Henry Lawson, Oodgeroo Noonuccal and even famed modern poet, Rupert McCall, and their spine-tingling odes to Australia’s ‘sweeping plains, ragged mountain ranges, droughts and flooding rains’, it’s fitting therefore, that one of the nation’s richest poetry competitions is hosted by one of the nation’s most beautiful Outback towns – Cloncurry,” he said.

“The number and calibre of this year’s entries have reinforced the Cloncurry Poetry Prize as one of the richest and most prestigious poetry contests in the country.”

The mayor also commended the work of this year’s judges; Allan Cooney, Brenda-Joy Pritchard (2022 winner) and Penny Lane (2023 winner).

“Our judges have volunteered many hours to read hundreds of poems entered in this year’s competition and we are so thankful,” he said.

The winning poems can be found on Cloncurry Shire Council’s website.

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