Andrew Hardy Poetry Prize Judges Report 2025
The Andrew Hardy Youth Poetry Prize was created by the Tasmanian Poetry Festival committee in 2022 to honour the memory of Andrew Hardy who died in 1997 at the age of 22. Andrew was mentored by the late poet Tim Thorne who recognised and encouraged his talent and potential.
The late Tim Thorne (founder of the Tasmanian Poetry Festival in 1985) said this about Andrew:
“Andrew Hardy was not only a poet of great potential, but his sudden and unexpected death deprived us of his keen intelligence, his warm personality and his idiosyncratic and zany genius. His touch is always deft, no matter what the subject and his sense of tone is exact and knowing.”
Entrants must be residents of Tasmania, and the prize and commendations are for original poetry comprising two age categories:
The judges would like to thank the wonderful teachers of Tasmania from the Government, Independent, Catholic, Steiner, and home-schooling sectors, who supported their students to become involved in the Award. As each year passes the reach is growing.
There were 79 entries in the Andrew Hardy Youth Poetry Prize for 2025, 46 entries in the 8-15 years category, and 33 in the 16-25 years category – an increase over last year’s submissions by 38. Cause for celebration!
The poems spoke to the beauty of landscape; travails of the planet; relationship to family; and to love, music, sport and popular culture. They explored all facets of life with mindful observations portrayed with passion.
Poetry is on the ascendency, and these young writers are receiving great support from their local communities – it is an art form that enriches us all.
Opportunities abound for young people to write and submit poetry on various platforms and through events, such as: Indigo Teen Magazine created by teens for teens; Write the World, a monthly competition for young writers; APS (Australian Poetry Slam) Youth organised through Word Travels – a national series of slams and workshops; Tas Writers youth writing workshops; the State Library of Victoria resources for young and emerging writers; and internationally, online poets on Instagram.
These resources and more are available, and young people are accessing them. The Andrew Hardy Poetry Prize is developing a close association with schools and is now accessible on-line for the first time in 2025, so connections and affiliations can only grow through this initiative.
The poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko wrote, Poetry is like a bird, it ignores all frontiers.
Sincerely,
Therese Corfiatis, Kim Nielsen-Creeley, Pam Schindler
Awards: 8 – 15 years old
Highly commended 8-15 years old
Entry 60, “My cello”
Judges’ comments: This is a high-spirited celebration of the old instrument, with nice use of sounds “Gliss / Rumble / Puck” and precise detail.
Maggie Clarke
Age: 13
School Attending: marist regional college
Highly commended 8-15 years old
Entry 64, “Simac, my shining star”
Judges’ comments: A poem of love for a cat, full of feeling and fresh observation. “My voice softens / But your spirit roars with light.”
Elana Mezger-Kuciak
Age: 10
School Attending: Tamar Valley Steiner School
Second prize 8-15 years old
Entry 68, “The Eulogy of My Teenage Years (You’re Mature for Your Age)”
Judges’ comments: This is a poem of the vastness of the universe, and the confusion and questioning of trying to understand your place in the world, and being told you are “too young.” A thoughtful poem which would work well as “spoken word.”
Jamie Nguyen
Age: 15
First prize 8-15 years old
Entry 44, “Tiagarra”
Judges’ comments: This is a reflective poem about the shared experience of an encounter with indigenous history and culture, when “it felt like they awoke”, and to have their faces painted with ochre felt like “a grace.” Clear-eyed and insightful.
Isabella Short
Age: 12
School Attending: Sacred Heart Ulverstone catholic school
Awards: 16 – 25 years old
Highly commended 16-25 years old
Entry 25, “Where the wind listens”
Judges’ comments: This poem carries deep connection to the land, watching, listening, being. It is lyrical in its rhythms and visual imagery. _ emailed, called (voicemail) and texted – no response
Isaac Smedley
Age: 18
School Attending: St Patrick’s College, Launceston
Highly commended 16-25 years old
Entry 65, “Meditate”
Judges’ comments: This poem displays original and precise observation of a moment in nature, then turning inward, the “slow flow of time”. The judges admired the clever rhymes and half-rhymes, and the changes of pace within the line set, and the vivid imagery, the robin who “flickers, then rests.” –
Ella McGlashan
Age: 23
From: nipaluna/Hobart
Second prize 16-25 years old
Entry 47, “an’ we praised him to the sky (stargazy pie)”
Judges’ comments: This poem stood out for its rhythm and verbal playfulness and imaginative intelligence. Although some of its lines are mysterious, it is full of music and energy.
Fletcher Quinn
Age: 17
School Attending: Launceston College
First prize 16-25 years old
Entry 32, “Our inheritance”
Judges’ comments: In this poem, the existential pain of climate change is writ large, for the present and for future generations. The poem, while concisely and directly written, is rich in imagery – “fish floating like peeled silver in the reeds.” Each stanza is carefully placed, beginning with learning from our forebears, leading on to acknowledgement of profound change and still – hope for future listening and learning.
Aysha Mohamed
From: Launceston College
Age: 17
Our inheritance
There was a time the wind told stories.
My grandfather said you could hear themin the whistle through eucalypts,
in the way the crows would answer back.
He taught me to read weather like scripture:
a hot wind meant lightning,
a burnt sky meant ash,
and a silence too thick to breathe meant
it was already too late.
I remember the summer the river turned sour:
fish floating like peeled silver in the reeds,
my mother not letting me swim.
She didn’t speak much that season.
The garden curled into itself like a fist.
At school, we made dioramas of “sustainable futures”
mine was cardboard glaciers and cardboard fire.
I glued a tiny house at the edge of a cliff
and called it “Home”.
At night, I dreamed of oceans swallowing
the places we never went to,
and forests cracking open like skin.
We weren’t meant to carry this.
Not the maths of melting,
not the graphs shaped like cliff dives,
not the guilt of being born on borrowed time.
But we do.
We carry it in compost bins and protest signs,
in poems like this one.
We carry it in the awkward hope
that someone after us might still
learn to listen when the wind tells stories.
-Aysha Mohamed