ABPA - Australian Bush Poets Association

The following results have been received from the Henry Lawson Memorial and Literary Society Awards

We proudly announce the winners and commendations for the 2016-17 competition:
Poetry:
1st Prize ($1,000) Brenda Joy Pritchard for ‘My Alpine World’
2nd Prize ($250) Catherine Lee for ‘Everlasting Soldiers’
3rd Prize ($100) Shelley Hansen for ‘Communication Breakdown’
Highly Commended:
Brenda Joy Pritchard for ‘Ghost Child’
Catherine Lee for ‘Stolen’
Tony Hammill for ‘Black and White’
Terry Piggott for ‘Top Camp – Up in the Devil’s Lair’
Commended:
Tom McIlveen for ‘Won’t you come?’
Robyn Sykes for ‘Treacherous Veil’
Tom McIlveen for ‘Raggamuffin Rejects’
The following results -- although not bush poetry -- are included to show that Forum members are achieving in other genres (see those in italics)
Short Story:
1st Prize ($1,000) Jacqueline Trott for ‘The Scarlet Widow Maker’
2nd Prize ($250) Victoria Hann for ‘A Sign of Life’
3rd Prize ($100) Rhonda Tallnash for ‘The Guardian’
Highly Commended:
Alys Jackson for ‘Chiyogami Fires’
Jacqueline Trott for ‘Dresses of Light’
Yvonne Popplewell for ‘It Never Rains’
Melva Graham for ‘Dust Storm in the Mallee’
Shelley Hansen for 'Three Syllables'
Jacqueline Trott for ‘Lovers’ Tangle’

Free Verse:
1st Prize ($500) Barry Collier for ‘Millennium Drought’
2nd Prize ($125) Penny Lane for ‘A Different Now’
3rd Prize ($50) Roger Vickery for ‘Ghost Morse’
Highly Commended:
Peter Ramm for ‘Wanderlust’
Shelley Hansen for 'A Day in the Life'
Commended:
Lyn Chatham for ‘Some Advice From Hamilton Hume’
Bob Jarrad for ‘The Block’

Congratulations to all. Apologies if I have missed any forum members from the Italics.

Congratulations everyone - and especially Brenda for taking out top billing in the bush verse section!

Thanks also to the Henry Lawson Society for staging this prestigious competition which is so much appreciated by us writers - and to the judges for their hard work!

Cheers
Shelley

Congratulations to all, particularly Shelley for picking up awards in all three sections...no mean feat! Rhonda came to the awards ceremony because of her third in the short-story section and presented her story as a performance rather than a reading, which was a great success.

I judged both of the poetry categories and the final decisions were very difficult as the standard of entries on the short-list in each case was uniformly high. In fact, in the traditional verse section I had a long-list of 20 impressive entries. I've written a report for the HLS magazine, so I'll leave more detailed comments to that.

Cheers
David

Thank you to David Campbell for judging both the Bush Poetry and Free Verse sections of this competition with his usual thoroughness and competence. It is indeed an honour to be selected amongst the winners from a judge of this calibre.
I concur with David that Shelley's achievement is very special -- it is great to see Bush Poets proving themselves as 'writers' across the broader board.

Thanks so much David and Brenda for your kind words. I have dabbled in free verse before but without success, and I've never considered short story writing to be my forte at all, so my entries in both these sections were very much in the "wild card" category!

So as you can imagine, I was thrilled (and astonished) to receive the results.

Cheers
Shelley

Congrats Shelley. You certainly have established you are "A Lady of Lines"!
Cheers
Val W

Thank you Val - what a lovely thing to say!

Cheers
Shelley

Wow! Congratulations Brenda, very well done indeed.

Also to Catherine and Shelley,
and all the other winners.

Where have you been hiding Catherine?

Cheers

Terry

Warmest congratulations to everyone, and special thanks to David, and the Henry Lawson Society. It truly is a joy and an honour to be included among the winners of this prestigious competition!

You are right Terry - I do seem to have been hiding this year. I just happened to come online today and realise I'd not signed in for ages, so it was timely to see your message - apologies for my absence but thank you for noticing!

That's OK Catherine - I'm a fairly rare visitor myself these days.

Pleased to hear all's well

Terry