Poetry d’Amour Anthology

“Love is romantic, sensual, secretive, seductive and spiritual. The poems in this anthology embrace all these emotions and more. They reflect and reveal. With words alone, poets must canvas a picture for their kind of love: the known and the unrequited. They speak with many voices, forms, styles.” 

Rose van Son, 2022 Judge

“this poem … resonates to the ideal picture of those attitudes that make us uniquely Australian and as identifiable as our accent globally. Full of event and vigour with startling perceptions as the ‘air turning squid ink’ and the telling line of ‘tracks of love’ – the basis of the awards – with ‘stained seats, sheets, sand beds, upended masts.’ I loved the personification as a hermit crab scurrying everywhere and the changing panel van’s rusting that leads to the next habitation and shift in lifestyle. Totally accessible, slightly cynical and so ebulliently buoyant!”

Peter Jeffery OAM, Contest Judge, commenting on the winning poem.

Love is ‘many-splendoured’ and it enriches as well as tests us. It is both a universal, and at the same time, a unique experience; one we’ve all had at least once, if not many times, during our lives.

The poems submitted for Poetry d’Amour 2020 reflect multi-faceted experiences, and explore love as affection, missed opportunities, a young and carefree seduction, the first stirrings of romance, compelling sexual arousal or physical attraction, the loving connections of family, the tender love of long familiarity, or the bereavement of a loved one.

Vivienne Glance
2020 Contest Judge

cover art by Georgina Moore

Here, in the following pages, we have 90 Poems to test the freshness of Love and Poetry. Sincerity and Creativity combining together in a bed of Tradition, forever refreshing the boundaries of Love.  Judging them and awarding distinction to some and not others was a tough task. After 60 years of writing poetry myself, many of them teaching the mechanics of verse, I appraise a poem’s sincerity as much as its technique. On that basis I would like to print all entries! But I had to be practical and lean on the objective side of judging. So I looked for poems that were the vehicles for the transportation of sincere emotion—with some wit and skill in writing.

Andrew Burke,
2019 Contest Judge

This year’s anthology, the first after the success of the same sex marriage vote in Australia and fifty years since the summer of love in San Francisco, celebrates love in all its forms with the accompanying foolishness and wisdom. It was with these two events in mind as I read the 210 entries to Poetry d’Armour.

We all need to love and to be loved but finding love can be both problematic and joyous. Love that is inclusive love for all was the ideology of the summer of love and the same sex marriage bill. “It’s what we came here for” said Elton John and “all we need” said John Lennon. Michael Leunig recognised love’s complexity “Love one another and you will be happy. It’s as simple and as difficult as that”.

I chose the poems for this anthology to reflect how our society is changing to include all in the search and discovery of love.

Coral Carter
2018 Contest Judge

“Love embraces all contexts, from clouds to quirky aunts and uncles, from arcs of beach to the arms of a life partner. These are rich and varied poems that sparkle with ingenuity. Love is in their craft and in their calling.”

Kevin Gillam,
2017 Contest Judge

The poems in this anthology were chosen in the most part for a deft evasion of the trap of cliché or the way they were able to write “around’ the subject rather than directly to or at it.

Amanda Joy
2016 Contest Judge

Love is a subject that is much written about and the challenge of the poet is to find new ways of saying old truths. The poems that stood out were able to show rather than tell, offered a fresh approach to an old story, and were able to maintain some burden of mystery; that is they did not attempt to answer all questions with trite or predictable endings, but offered an element of surprise and imaginative originality. 

Nandi Chinna
2015 Contest Judge