Oliver wins €6000 Moth Poetry Prize

English poet Adam Oliver has won the €6000 (A$9900) Moth Poetry Prize for “Shazaya”.

The annual international prize for a single unpublished poem, now in its 15th year, is sponsored by literary magazine the Moth. The prize is judged blind by a different poet each year, with this year’s judge being Jamaican poet Ishion Hutchinson.

Hutchinson said that the poem “is about the harrowing moment and aftermath of a car bombing in Beirut. The spare, impressionistic language heightens without poetising the vivid, tragic reality of such state violence. Its unflinching, clear-eyed depiction of the irreparable severity of that violence on a single human […] cuts deep into those who can’t even articulate less imagine such violence, commonplace as it has become in our world.”

After graduating from Cambridge University’s Masters in Creative Writing, Oliver taught English for many years in England, Italy and Turkey. He is currently caring for his mother and completing a collection of poems, “Disappearing Act”, about her Alzheimer’s disease, while also working on nonfiction work and a graphic novel.

Oliver said that he is “absolutely thrilled ‒ and stunned in equal measure … This is such an honour, and my first feelings are of incredible gratitude to […] the Moth, and of course to Ishion.”

Poets with shortlisted pieces, including Ronald Carson, Elena Croitoru-Reed and Juleus Ghunta, will each receive €1000 (A$1600).

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