South Coast Writers Centre Poetry Award 2026

The SCWC 2026 Poetry Prize invites submissions responding to the theme “States”.

First prize: $1,000

Second prize: $100

Judged by esteemed poet Julie Janson, co-recipient of the Oodgeroo Noonuccal Poetry Prize 2016 and winner of the Judith Wright Poetry Prize 2019, and Peter Frankis, Chair of the SCWC board.

All winning entries will be published in the South Coast Writers Centre’s 2027 Anthology.

The Award is run in association with the Wollongong Art Gallery exhibition Set States, which brings together a selection of video works by Kate Mitchell, known for her constructed sets and performative, often absurdist gestures. Spanning key works such as Fall Stack, I Am Not a Joke, Beyond Setting Suns, and Hypnotised into Being—recently acquired by Wollongong Art Gallery—the exhibition explores shifting psychological states and embodied experiences: states of mind, states of action, states of play, states of being.

Mitchell’s videos play with humour and endurance, capturing moments where physical and emotional limits are tested or transcended. Her practice examines the fragile space between control and collapse, seriousness and silliness, labour and levity.

Presented in dialogue with works from the Wollongong Art Gallery collection, Set States invites new connections between contemporary Australian video art and historical representations of human agency, ritual, and transformation. The exhibition considers themes of play, perception and performance—suggesting that to “set states” is to be actively engaged with the world, however unstable it may be.