In 2021 Australian Poetry (AP) began a new annual series surveying and showcasing the flourishing literature of Australian poetry. Our 2022 volume follows the prestigious debut of Best of Australian Poems 2021 with guest editors for Best of Australian Poems 2022 being award-winning poets and highly respected editors, Jeanine Leane and Judith Beveridge.
The volume will publish a selection of 100 poems, or slightly more, both previously published and unpublished, made from between 1 July 2021 and 7 August 2022. The publication is funded by the Australia Council for the Arts and Creative Victoria.
Exploring what might constitute a ‘best of’ anthology, and to ensure, and celebrate, inclusivity and richness of genre, the selection process includes an open call-out for submissions, along with a co-guest-editor model. Poems will also be selected from this time period as published by Australia’s incredible poetry publishing sector – its journals, magazines, individual collections and anthologies. When submitting to the BoAP 2022 call-out, opening 7 July 2022, and running to 11.59 pm 7 August 2022, please ensure you list any prior publication details. ANY PRIOR pre-publications must have occurred between 1 July 2021-7 August 2022. Unpublished work will be equally considered by the guest editors, as was the case in 2021.
BoAP 2022 has a publication date of 1 December. An event will again be presented in partnership with the Wheeler Centre on 29 November. The book will be beautifully produced, to the highest publication standards, and will sell as a stand-alone title, alongside other AP subscriber publications. Designer is Sophie Gaur and Publisher is Jacinta Le Plastrier.
AP, as a national poetry body, publishes the national poetry journal, Australian Poetry Journal, and a range of other annual digital and print anthologies. These publications also publish poets who appear in AP’s many events with national literary festivals. AP would like to deeply honour prior ‘Best’ Australian poems and poetry series, including Black Inc.’s prestigious, long-running and impactful The Best Australian Poems series, (2003-2017). It is intended that BoAP regenerates and continues these traditions, where each volume presents a selection of that period’s most remarkable poets and poems.
From 7 July 2022 AP is accepting submissions for BoAP 2022 until 7 August, 2022. For call-out information, head here. For enquiries, please email ceo@australianpoetry.org
To support the work of Australian Poetry, please consider subscribing or donating here: australianpoetry.org/subscribe
You do not need to be a subscriber to submit poems to BoAP.
Jeanine Leane is a Wiradjuri writer, poet and academic from southwest New South Wales. Her poetry, short stories, critique and essays have been published in Hecate: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Women’s Liberation Australian Poetry Journal, Antipodes, Overland and the Sydney Review of Books. Jeanine has published widely in the area of Aboriginal literature, writing otherness and creative non-fiction. Jeanine was the recipient of the University of Canberra Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Poetry Prize, and she has won the Oodgeroo Noonucal Prize for Poetry twice (2017 & 2019. She was the 2019 recipient of the Red Room Poetry Fellowship for her project called Voicing the Unsettled Space: Rewriting the Colonial Mythscape. Jeanine teaches Creative Writing and Aboriginal Literature at the University of Melbourne. She is the recipient of an Australian Research Council (ARC) Fellowship for a project called ‘Aboriginal Writing: Shaping the literary and cultural history of Australia, since 1988’ (2014-2018); and a second ARC grant that looks at Indigenous Storytelling and the Archive 2020-2024). In 2020 Jeanine edited Guwayu – for all times – a collection of First Nations Poetry commissioned by Red Room Poetry and published by Magabala Books. In 2021 she was the recipient of the School of Literature Art and Media (SLAM) Poetry Prize University of Sydney; and runner up in the Helen Anne Bell Poetry Bequest.
Judith Beveridge is the author of several poetry collections, including The Domesticity of Giraffes (1987); Accidental Grace (1996), which won the Wesley Michel Wright Award; Wolf Notes (2003), which won the Judith Wright Calanthe Award and the Victorian Premier’s Award; Storm and Honey (2009); and Sun Music: New and Selected Poems (2018) which won the 2019 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry. Beveridge edited The Best Australian Poetry 2006 and coedited, with Jill Jones and Louise Wakeling, A Parachute of Blue: First Choice of Australian Poets (1995).
Beveridge’s additional honors include the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal, the Dame Mary Gilmore Award, the New South Wales Premier’s Award, the Josephine Ulrick Poetry Prize, and the Christopher Brennan Award for excellence in literature. Beveridge served as poetry editor of the literary magazine Meanjin and has taught at Newcastle and Sydney Universities.
