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'How to Emerge' by Jill Jones wins the NSW Premier's Literary Award for Poetry 2026

'How to Emerge' by Jill Jones wins the NSW Premier's Literary Award for Poetry 2026

'What pathways can humans explore to find growth, understanding and even peace? The task for any poet exploring these themes is to proceed free of sentimentality, cliché or proselytisation. How To Emerge navigates these challenges with a combination of lyrical clarity and astonishing imagery. Jill Jones demonstrates an overarching sense of control as the poems unfurl an exploration of both language and lives. There is a quiet, depth-defying resonance throughout the book as it skates between sky, asphalt, weed, wharf, vulnerability and memory.

The possibilities for self are made endless through observation of the infinitesimal and ephemeral. Meaning emerges incrementally through rhythm, image and pause. Jones demonstrates a mastery of catalogue and repetition; with each reconfiguration, the world appears new, providing both answer and question.

Jones masterfully clips fragments of fact, inquiry and observation into a whispered wonder. These poems discover humanity, perhaps even meaning in the accumulating weight of the world; we are star dust, but we are also the brat summer. Part of the appeal of these poems is the rare faith they show in the reader, a belief that readers will find their own meaning and carry from the collection something of the warmth, humour and care that radiates from the poems.'

NSW Premier's Literary Awards judges

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Award-winning Australian Poetry

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