A former corporate law lecturer has taken out the 2025 Australian Catholic University Prize for Poetry.
Award-winning legal and creative writer Roger Vickery has claimed one of Australia’s richest prizes for a single poem, winning $10,000 for his deeply personal history of the New South Wales gold mining area, Araluen.
In his poem, Our Greater Souls — which responded to the prize’s theme of “Belonging” — Mr Vickery compares his own experience of living in Araluen with that of colonial poet Charles Harpur, who in 1858 was made gold commissioner of the southern goldfields.
Where Harpur lamented the environmental destruction and the violence against local Aboriginal people, Mr Vickery also recalls the “good and terrible things that happened to us there”.
“We’ve lived through fire and deaths and loss and some wonderful times and yet always there is a sadness about the land, about the environmental damage and the sense of a lost people, so it’s a haunted place,” Mr Vickery said.
“That poem helped me get in touch with my own hauntings and the bigger hauntings around that land. It’s an immensely powerful place for me. It’s a very honest poem, more honest than I’d like some of my family to hear, so it’s a very authentic poem.”
The poem also wrestles with persistent doubts that his family’s collective torment and trauma is “miniscule” when compared with the loss felt by Araluen’s traditional owners, the Walbunja people of the Yuin nation.
ACU Prize for Poetry judges Professor Robert H. F. Carver and Emeritus Professor Margot Hillel said this year’s competition attracted more than 500 entries, including mother-and-son Sarah Tiffen and Wilbur Nelson and a record 11 poems by Jo Gardiner, who will be featured in the published anthology.
“Many of the finest poems in this collection address, directly or obliquely, some of the most challenging questions of our times: ‘Who belongs where?’ and ‘What belongs to whom?’ How do we weigh current political and demographic realities against the claims of history (whether ancient or modern)?” the judges’ report said.
A regular contender for the ACU Prize for Poetry, this is the first time Mr Vickery has been named a winner.
“I’ve submitted most years to the ACU Prize for Poetry and quite rightly haven’t been accepted. I’m thrilled this one got through,” he said.
Annie Mairéad Hunter was awarded the Runner Up prize of $5000 with her entry ‘Double exposure, and Thomas Fletcher took Third Prize with The Curate’s Visit. Five poems have been Highly Commended this year.
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Legal eagle wins ACU Prize for Poetry with ode to Araluen Valley (ACU)
