Poetry Shelf Noticeboard: The Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems

By Poetry Shelf - Paula Green | Posted: Monday Nov 24, 2025

Congratulations to our very own Sue Wootton, winner of the Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems.

Poetry Shelf Noticeboard: The Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems | NZ Poetry Shelf

International Writers’ Workshop NZ is delighted to announce that Ōtepoti Dunedin poet Sue Wootton is the 2025 winner of The Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems judged by Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington poet Anna Jackson.  Richard Smith from Porirua is runner-up.

Sue receives the prestigious $1000 prize for her sequence ‘Holding Patterns: seven songs of pots, jars, bowls and vases’. She says she is honoured and delighted to be awarded this year’s Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems and thanks the Grattan family for making this award possible, IWW, and judge Anna Jackson. 

The sequence was initially inspired by the poems of Ruth Dallas, which are studded with references to pots and vases, and by contemplating the question, ‘Is the clay / Subject to the potter / Or the potter to the clay?’ This led Sue to write about a set of hand-thrown glazed bowls (made by Ōtepoti Dunedin ceramicist Liz Rowe), each of which has two words pressed into it. She responded to these in a series of bowl-shaped sonnets, each poem contained within a defined form.

Sue is a poet and novelist and the publisher at Otago University Press. Her most recent poetry collection isThe Yield (Otago University Press, 2017), a finalist in the 2018 Ockham New Zealand book awards. In 2023 Sue travelled to France as the 50th New Zealand writer to hold the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship. 

Richard Smith is awarded runner-up for his sequence, ‘Mango Rains’, The sequence was drawn from his time while living in Phnom Penh. and draws attention to small markers of hope within the hardship of daily life in Cambodia, while acknowledging the shadow of genocide. The sequence also  encounters Cambodia’s flora and seasons, the Khmer people, classical dance, crafts, work and play. In the distant past Richard’s work appeared in half a dozen publications in Aotearoa New Zealand. More recent writing can be found in Ekstasis, A Fine Line, Balloons Literary Journal, London Grip, and the anthology Now and Then (Landing Press). Richard studied writing poetry at Victoria University of Wellington and publishing and writing at Whitireia.

Anna Jackson said judging The Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems was an honour and a pleasure. She said there was a wonderful range of approaches to writing sequences amongst the entries. The most successful sustained one idea, and didn’t combine too many formatting or punctuation styles but brought the poetry alive with vivid, concrete imagery and a sense of direction or purpose.  On choosing her winner, Anna said that of her short-listed entries, this is the one she kept returning to.

Anna also particularly highly commended two Tamaki Makarau Auckland poets,  SK Grout for ‘Ghost Nets’ and Edna Heled for ‘riding a two humped camel in the vampire land on milk and honey’.

The Kathleen Grattan Prize of a Sequence of Poems was established by the late Jocelyn Grattan in memory of her mother. International Writers’ Workshop NZ has had the honour of running the competition for its members since its inception in 2009, and over the years it has been won by both established and emerging poets. The Prize is the smaller of the two poetry competitions funded by the Jocelyn Grattan Charitable Trust, the other being the biennial Kathleen Grattan Award, run by Landfall / Otago University Press.

International Writers’ Workshop NZ (IWW), which is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2026, aims to encourage new writers and inspire more experienced writers with workshops and writing competitions covering a range of genres, as well as poetry, throughout the year. Workshops are held twice monthly from February to November and alternate between rooms at St Aidans Church in Auckland’s Northcote, and Zoom.