The Poetry Object encourages young writers and their teachers submit poems and photographs about objects that are special to them.
Springing from The Red Room Company’s education program, The Poetry Object is a free writing project for students attending NSW Public Schools in the Sydney Region. Special objects that inspired poems in 2011 included coffee machines, beloved pets and books, the Quran, cricket bats, musical instruments, jewellery and clothing, revealing the rich meanings that objects acquire as irreplaceable parts of our lives.
As part of The Poetry Object 2012, six celebrated Australian poets have been commissioned to write new poems about their own talismanic objects. Winner of the Thomas Sharpcott Prize, ; performance poet and fellow Sharpcott Prize winner ; Judith Wright Prize runner-up ; 2011 City of Sydney Poet, ; , an exciting new voice in poetry; and the inimatable . For three months The State Library of NSW is hosting a special exhibition of commissioned and student poems, images and objects from The Poetry Object project.
During November and December the six commission poems, along with the student ‘Poem of Excellence’, will be shared with THEthe Poetry audiences.
