Dorothea Mackellar Poetry Awards
This year I have the honour of being the Judge of the Junior Categories for the Dorothea Mackellar Poetry Awards, the oldest and largest poetry competition for school aged children in Australia.
This year’s competition opened on March 1 so already I am reading poems daily, sent from children from remote areas of Australia and from, perhaps, my local primary school. Between now and when the competition closes at the end of June, I will read and judge about 6000 poems (at least that’s what it was last year for Glenda Millard.)
I will also be working with wonderful author Nette Hilton who is judging the poems for the secondary students. In August we will fly to Gunnedah in NSW, (where Dorothea Mackellar frequently spent time at her family’s properties and wrote some beautiful poetry about the area,) to present these awards to the winning students.
It is both a pleasure and a privilege to be reading creative work from young poets and already I’ve been ‘blown away’ by some of the writing. Have a look at the Dorothea Mackellar website http://www.dorothea.com.au/
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