{"id":1750,"date":"2025-10-11T21:37:38","date_gmt":"2025-10-11T21:37:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/?p=1750"},"modified":"2025-10-18T22:24:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T22:24:11","slug":"young-dawkins-discussing-the-2025-tim-thorne-poetry-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/2025\/10\/11\/young-dawkins-discussing-the-2025-tim-thorne-poetry-prize\/","title":{"rendered":"Young Dawkins | The 2025 Tim Thorne Poetry Prize"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 2025 Tasmanian Poetry Festival kicked off Friday evening,\u202fOctober\u202f10,\u202f2025, at Sporties Bar in Launceston. Young\u202fDawkins<\/a> reflected on serving as one of three judges for the 2025 Tim\u202fThorne Poetry Prize.<\/p>\n

American-born poet Young Dawkins was a central figure in the New Hampshire beat revival movement, where he helped found the Jazzmouth Poetry Festival, before moving to Scotland and becoming a regular on the Scottish Performance Poetry scene. He was the 2011 Scottish Slam Poetry Champion, and the 2012 runner up. In May 2011, Young went to Paris to represent Scotland in the Poetry Slam World Cup, and in August 2011 he performed a solo show at the Edinburgh Fringe.<\/p>\n

From 2011 \u2013 2013, Young organised and hosted the BBC Edinburgh Fringe Poetry Slam.<\/p>\n

Since moving to Tasmania in 2013, Young has performed at events and festivals including the Silver Words spoken word night, the UndergroundArtBar, Cygnet Folk Festival, Pangaea, Junction Arts Festival, Moonah Arts Centre, Stories After Dark at Hobart Library, and ECHO. He has also performed with highly acclaimed jazz musicians Andrew Legg and Nick Haywood at venues including Lark Cellar Door, the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and the Tasmanian College of the Arts.<\/p>\n

\n

Young Dawkins \u2013 a resident these days of southern Tasmania \u2013 spoke of his pleasure at being in Launceston for the opening of the 41st\u00a0Tasmanian Poetry Festival.\u00a0\u2018I believe Launceston is the beating heart of Tasmanian poetry, I really do,\u2019 he observed. \u2018You people love poetry. You show it. You support it. You care about it. You produce it. And as a poet, I love you. So thank you very much for having me here.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018The Tim Thorne Prize in Poetry has very quickly made its mark in Australia. I know people from the mainland who talk to me about it and they say, where did that come from, a $25,000 prize? That\u2019s quite remarkable. There have only been 20 Tasmanian poets who have even been named to the Long List. Only two people have won it.\u2019<\/p>\n

Young suggested the prize, and its prestige, owes a great debt to Tasmanian poet Tim Slade. Slade had taken the case for increased recognition for the prize to the Tasmanian state government, persistently arguing for greater prizemoney (the state body\u2019s initial suggestion had been $10,000).<\/p>\n

\u2018So Tim Slade, if you see him\u2019 Dawkins continued, \u2018tell him thank you, because he\u2019s the reason that one of Tasmania\u2019s greatest poets is commemorated and lives on in this way.\u2019<\/p>\n

Dawkins\u2019 allusion to \u2018one of Tasmania\u2019s greatest poets\u2019 was right on the money. Following Thorne\u2019s death, Tasmanian MP Michelle O\u2019Byrne read the comments of friend and fellow festival director, poet and playwright Cameron Hindrum<\/a>, into Hansard:<\/p>\n

One of Australia\u2019s best contemporary poets, Tim Thorne<\/a>, passed away this morning after a long and typically defiant battle with illness. His moral courage, his unique capacity to turn a perfect poetic phrase, especially to make unexpected rhymes materialise seemingly out of nowhere, his strength, his intelligence, his humour, all were a source of inspiration to generations of writers who had the benefit of his mentorship or guidance. I will be forever grateful for having known him and I hope that that is no small thing. There will, of course, always be the infinite legacy of his work. Whenever and wherever it is read, he will be there, smiling. Vale, Tim, it is not enough to say thank you, but thank you.<\/i><\/p>\n

\n

\u2018Let me tell you about the 2025 awards,\u2019 Young Dawkins continued. \u2018I was honoured to be asked to be one of three judges \u2013 three completely different judges \u2013 coming at this with very different points of view about what constitutes good poetry.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018We met for the first time in October of last year and were handed 25 books. Here you go, figure it out. Twenty-five books of poetry.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018We looked at each other and said, we\u2019re never going to agree about this. So we said, we need some guide rules. And we set out three broad criteria on which we would judge these works.\u2019<\/p>\n

The criteria the trio chose was, firstly, the quality of the writing. \u2018And I say immodestly that I think all three of us have done enough with poetry to understand what good writing looks like and sounds like,\u2019 Dawkins added.<\/p>\n

\u2018The second was interesting, to judge it on the impact and what our emotional response was as an individual. We agreed that when you read poetry, it should move you. It should make you angry. It should make you sad. It should make you other things \u2013 but it should do something. It should have an emotional response, an impact.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018And the third thing was how interested were we in the theme of the book? How did the book keep us connected all the way through? We spent four months at this. We met dozens of times by email, we met in person, we called each other on the phone. We talked a lot. We spent a lot of time on this and took this very seriously. We were so far apart on our views.\u2019<\/p>\n

The trio began by ranking each book on points. \u2018And we weren\u2019t anywhere near each other. Not even remotely near each other. And we did this again and again and again and again.\u2019<\/p>\n

After a period of reading \u2014 \u2018we read and read\u2019 \u2013 they kept returning to one book. In conversation they used words and phrases to describe their responses: \u2018Simple.\u2019 \u2018Tight.\u2019 \u2018Nothing wasted.\u2019 \u2018The artistry is impressive.\u2019 \u2018Her images wash of colour and movement.\u2019: Pam Schindler\u2019s \u2018say, a river\u2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

Dawkins introduced Pam Schindler to read. Pam mentioned how honoured and thrilled she was to win the award. \u2018When the shortlist was announced, the judges published brief comments on each of the books on the shortlist,\u2019 Pam said. \u2018And I thought, well, that\u2019s enough prize for me, just hearing those words about my book when they were included in the shortlist. But it\u2019s a great honour. And I\u2019m also very thrilled to take part in kicking off this wonderful festival for its 41st time round, which is a huge achievement, very special.\u2019<\/p>\n

Young Dawkins also introduced the winner of the Highly Commended Section of the Award, Kim Nielsen-Creeley<\/a>, explaining how as judges they\u2019d \u2018continued to push books to the middle of the table, individually, one at a time, over the months, and there was another book we kept bringing back. And it was an interesting thing, because we knew this was a first collection by an author \u2013 an emerging voice \u2013and that there was a power here, and something distinctly, deeply Tasmanian about this voice. So for the first time in the history of the Tim Thorne Prize \u2013 right, there\u2019s only been two \u2013 but this is the first time, and we went to the Tasmanian government with the courage of Tim Slade, and said, we want to create a new designation. We want to create a designation highly commended.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Well, that\u2019s never been done before,\u2019 they said. \u2018Well, we\u2019re going to do it this year, because this book deserves it,\u2019 we replied.<\/p>\n

\u2018This is what we as judges wrote:<\/p>\n

This collection features intelligent and richly informed observations on how place impacts people. The poems are both reflective and vulnerable, and the reader gains deep insight into the author\u2019s lifelong response to her environment.<\/em><\/p>\n

And it gives me really great personal pleasure\u2019 Dawkins concluded, \u2018that I was the first one to pull this book out from the centre of the table.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 2025 Tasmanian Poetry Festival kicked off Friday evening,\u202fOctober\u202f10,\u202f2025, at Sporties Bar in Launceston. Young\u202fDawkins reflected on serving as one of three judges for the 2025 Tim\u202fThorne Poetry Prize. American-born …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[334,337,346,347,145,227,86,299,20,118,34,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coull-erin","category-dawkins-young","category-kelen-kit","category-mckeown-alex","category-nielsen-creeley-kim","category-schindler-pam","category-slade-tim","category-tasmanian-literary-awards-2025","category-tasmanian-poetry-festival","category-thorne-tim","category-wicks-les","category-winfield-liz","entry entry-center"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1750"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1750\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1762,"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1750\/revisions\/1762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}