On the 19th March, the South Coast Writers Centre invites you to join them at Coledale Community Hall from 3- 5pm for the SCWC 2022 Poetry Awards and the belated launch of the SCWC’s 2021 Anthology of writing.

The 2022 SCWC Poetry Award sought poems responding to the theme ‘ways to water’: the living connections we have to the places where the land meets the sea, where we live and breathe the salt air, swim and surf; snorkel and fish, walk and think and dream. Writers were invited to respond to Wollongong Art Gallery’s Ways to Water exhibition which brought together fifty key historical and contemporary works from Wollongong Art Gallery and University of Wollongong collections – as well as original artworks and interactive augmented reality – to highlight the complex shifts through physical and imagined encounters between Land Country and Sea Country.

The exhibition and the SCWC Poetry Award were presented in conjunction with Blue Futures, a Global Challenges keystone project partnership between the University of Wollongong and Illawarra Local Aboriginal Land Council. The project includes scientists, data modellers, economists, policy makers, social geographers, writers and artists who are together planning for a future that is sustainable for governments, industries, ecosystems and communities.

As well as presenting readings from those poets shortlisted for the poetry prize, the SCWC are happy to finally have the opportunity to launch the 2021 SCWC Anthology of writing, Legacies.  Legacies includes work by invitation from some of the writers who have had a significant impact on the Centre, the winners of the SCWC 2021 Poetry Award, and a curated selection of work from current members gathered through an open submission process.

The event will include a live reading by Mark Tredinnick of Five Soft Nets: A Coledale Sonnet Cycle, the poem commissioned for Coledale Community Hall, and readings of short stories and poems from writers including Mif Hudson, Kathleen Bleakley, Judi Morison, Morna Seres, Lore White, Erin Shiel, Jonathan Cant, Amelia Fielden, Peter Frankis, Linda Albertson, Emily Gray, Moira Kirkwood and Adara Enthaler. Poetry prize judges, SCWC Director Sarah Nicholson and Dr. Joshua Lobb, will present the awards.

Tickets are available here.