The Inaugural Theresa Matheson Bequest Award Winner Announcement

The Theresa Matheson Bequest Award 2025 is a new award for poets who have not had a poem published, outside self-publication or via Social Media. The Award, with a prize of $1,000 for the successful poet, has been established to honour the memory of Theresa Matheson (1972-2022) by her sister, Julie. Theresa was herself a prolific poet, but had not published a poem in her lifetime. This will be an annual award administrated by the national poetry body,  Australian Poetry.

 

 

Winner Announcement

We’re so pleased to announce the winner of the inaugural Theresa Matheson Bequest Award is Martha Kamara for her poem He Brings Me Flowers, I Bring Him Distance. Martha will work with 2025 Award judge Claire Gaskin to ready the poem for publication on our website, and we’re so excited for you all to read the remarkable poem.

 

Get to know the 2025 Theresa Matheson Bequest Award Winner!

Martha Kamara writes poems like the spaces between breaths, quiet yet full of longing. Her work carries the weight of unspoken words, the push and pull of love, faith, and the past. In her verse, the act of holding on feels like letting go, and every word is a step toward becoming whole again. Her poetry doesn’t just ask questions, it leaves them suspended in the air, waiting to be answered by the reader’s own heart.

Winning this award means more than recognition. It’s a moment of reclamation. He Brings Me Flowers, I Bring Him Distance came from a tender, often painful place in me, and to have this poem held and honoured like this makes me feel seen in a way I didn’t know I needed. As a Black Muslim woman, and a poet writing from the intersections of faith, trauma, and love, I’ve often felt like my voice lived on the margins. This win tells me, and others like me, that there is space for our softness, our grief, our healing, and our joy. I’m so proud of myself for telling the truth and letting it bloom.
As an emerging poet, this recognition feels like a quiet affirmation—a whisper that says: your voice matters, even now, even here. It’s an invitation to keep going, and I hope it reminds others starting out that their stories are worthy of being held, too.
– Martha Kamara, winner of the 2025 Theresa Matheson Bequest Award.

 

Highly Commended

We also congratulate Eli Ladigies’ for his poem The Line of Flight, which received a Highly Commended award.

Eli is a writer from Tasmania studying Creative Writing at RMIT. He is particularly interested in the form of prose poetry and the place of poetry in contemporary narratives.

Judge’s Report

We thank everyone who entered this year and Claire Gaskin for reading and judging.

 

‘Thank you to everyone who entered the Theresa Matheson Bequest. It was a privilege to read your intellectually engaged and deeply considered poems. It was hard to pick a winner because many pieces had poetic power. Many seized as a responsibility the passionate act of resistance that responding creatively is in a world of so much mindless destruction of life.

‘In the end I shortlisted the poems that drew me back to them, feeling their insistence. I finally picked as the winner the poem I felt was most resolved, which for me means the poem that wields technique and craft to take risks to incorporate the indeterminable. Risk engages connection through vulnerable generosity. It is a ruin of convention to achieve something fresh and alive through being experimental or a baring of self. Martha Kamara’s, winning poem, ‘He Brings Me Flowers, I Bring Him Distance’, has a strong clear voice. The line breaking and pacing is masterful. It keeps developing with a distillation that has the effect of a gathering of force. Eli Ladiges’, Highly Commended poem, ‘The Line of Flight’, also gathers force through its visceral and visual movements. It is an evocative poem, conceptually and intellectually inventive.’

– Claire Gaskin, 2025 Theresa Matheson Judge.

 

Statement from Julie Matheson – Award Founding Benefactor

We also thank Julie who making this Award possible, supporting both unpublished poets as well as honouring her sister’s memory.

 

‘The Theresa Matheson Bequest Award, with a prize of $1,000 for the successful poet, was created in memory of my sister, Theresa, whose love of poetry helped her navigate life’s challenges with curiosity and insight.  This award honours her spirit and encourages others to find their own voice through poetry. Reading the winning poem was deeply moving — it captured the same honesty and vulnerability that Theresa valued. As the founding benefactor, it means so much to see Theresa’s legacy live on, inspiring new poets to share their truth with the world.’

– Julie Matheson, sister of Theresa Matheson and Theresa Matheson Bequest Award Founding Benefactor.

 

A huge thank you to everyone who entered the competition — we were thrilled by the depth and number of submissions received in the inaugural year! Our gratitude also goes to judge Claire Gaskin for her thoughtful and generous assessment, as well as to Award benefactor Julie Matheson for her support in making this prize possible.

Congratulations to Martha Kamara, winner of this year’s prize, and to Eli Ladigies, whose poem received a Highly Commended award. We can’t wait to share Martha’s winning poem on our website later this year. Stay tuned!