Announcing the winner of the inaugural Southerly Poetry Prize

Congratulations to the winner of the inaugural Southerly Poetry Prize:

“Now ● Here ● This” by Christopher “Kit” Kelen

Kit will receive a cash prize of $2000 AUD, with his winning poem published in Southerly 81.1 in October 2026. Along with all shortlisted entries, “Now ● Here ● This” will also be published in Southerly online.

The judges, Paul Dawson, Bronwyn Lea, and Kate Fagan read 661 anonymised entries before selecting a shortlist and winner. Here is what they said:

“Now ● Here ● This” stands out for its linguistic verve, its lyric expression of a soul on the cusp of, in contemplation of, death. A celebration of mortality, the poem’s clipped utterances, imperatives, reflections, and interrogations populate caesura-packed couplets that are typically end-stopped yet spill across stanzas in an effortless rhythm. The poem displays the virtue of the art form where meaning is abundant yet elusive, like the speaker, both an embodied self and an anonymous lyric voice.

We are deeply grateful to the generous judges for their immense labour and for their ongoing dedication to Australian poetry.