Announcing the Winners of the 2024 Magpie Award for Poetry!

These Poems Just Soared!

We are delighted to announce the winner and runners-up of the 2024 Magpie Award for Poetry, with commentary from final judge Renée Sarojini Saklikar.

Look for these prize-winning poems, coming up in Issue 44, Autumn 2024.

Winner: ‘From the back row of the theatre of I Am’ by Angela Rebrec

“Intelligence and a sad-funny wit combine with a narrative form that pulls us in and resonates with unsettling images. The final well-crafted stanza shocks and haunts in equal measure. I kept returning to this one!“

1st Runner-Up: ‘HAVE YOU SEEN PRECIOUS?’ by Cicely Williams

“[A] strong personal voice, expanding our sense of what a poem can do in the department of story-telling. I loved all the word-filled sentences, the depth and density. A hybrid of lyric prose and the prose poem. Refreshing to see the line subsumed into the sentence. Lots of possibilities of form.“

2nd Runner-Up: ‘Roving Писанки’ by Veronika Gorlova

“In our cultural moment, fractured by war and humanitarian disasters, situated in a climate emergency, the combination of surreal imagery and words other than English, with a precise diction and stanza shape, intrigues and provokes. … Brave for the poet to just let the two languages cohere.“

Congratulations!

Thank you to all submitting poets for sharing your words and supporting Pulp Literature!

Thank you to Renée, for once again lending your time and talent to the Magpies. And to our first judges, Emily Osborne and Daniel Cowper, for compiling such a stellar shortlist.

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Calling all flash writers: enter the Hummingbird Prize, open now!

For your chance to appear in the magazine — and to win $300! — enter the 2024 Hummingbird Flash Fiction Prize, open until June 15th.

For all the details, and to enter, visit the contest page.