The Peter Porter Poetry Prize, now in its twenty-first year, attracted 1,171 entries, from twenty-nine countries. We thank our three judges – Sarah Holland-Batt, Paul Kane, and Peter Rose – who have shortlisted the following poems:

‘The Orphan’ by Sarah Day (Tasmania)
‘Hook, Grandmother, Line, Marlin’ by Jennifer Harrison (Victoria)
‘Notes from a Room’ by Audrey Molloy (NSW)
‘Moths That Fly by Night’ by Claire Potter (NSW)
‘The Vastness of What Poetry Can Do’ by Meredith Stricker (USA)

On our website we list the ten poems that comprise the official longlist. There you will also find the judges’ report, including remarks about the individual poems and the overall field.

The shortlisted poems appear in this issue from page 48.

The Covid-19 pandemic brought a halt to prize ceremonies, but this year the Porter Prize ceremony returns to its rightful domain – a public setting. Stay tuned for news of this free public event, to be held in Melbourne in the first half of February. After readings of the shortlisted poems, a special guest will name the overall winner of the Porter Prize, who will receive $6,000.

Meanwhile, our shortlisted poets have recorded their poems for The ABR Podcast. This will be available in early January.

Finally, we congratulate the five other poets who appeared on the longlist and who added such lustre to this year’s Porter Prize: Liam Ferney (Queensland), Paul Hetherington (ACT), Jennifer Kornberger (Western Australia), Julie Manning (Queensland), and Dolores Walshe (Ireland).

Arts Highlights

This issue, ABR features its annual Arts Highlights, as nominated by twenty-one arts critics and professionals. There was much to choose from. ABR alone published just over one hundred arts reviews in 2024 (film, theatre, music, opera, dance, art exhibitions). Many of them were the longest and most in-depth reviews to appear in any Australian publication. So, which play did Ben Brooker say Melbourne was ‘astonished by’ last year? Which conductor, according to Malcolm Gillies, made 2024 her own? What were Robyn Archer’s highlights? Read and find out!

Meanwhile, we look forward to bringing you some of the best arts criticism in the country in 2025.

AustLit

Earlier this year, ABR entered a partnership with AustLit, the online bibliographical and biographical database of Australian storytelling. Since its inception in the 1980s, AustLit has listed ABR reviews and articles, as it does for all major literary periodicals. Whereas in the past AustLit users needed to search for ABR articles separately to read the article, ABR hyperlinks now appear in AustLit listings, linking users to ABR’s website. ABR is the first such periodical to include hyperlinks in AustLit – it is, we hope and expect, a pioneering project. This year, due to the sterling efforts of the many Monash University interns who spend time with us, we have linked almost three hundred issues – so ABR’s growing digital archive is fully linked in AustLit back to 1986 as we go to press.

Digital Archive

ABR’s interns have also been hard at work on expanding ABR’s digital archive back to the second series, which began in 1978. This is truly handcrafted publishing – and we don’t mean ‘handcrafted’ in the sense of pies in petrol stations, or coffee beans in hamburger joints. We mean, each single review is (yes, lovingly!) scanned, converted, edited, and uploaded on our website, fully tagged and searchable under contributor name, book title, and author. It takes time. Since ABR began digitising content from 1978 to 2010 five years ago, we have digitised more than 4,400 individual articles, allowing subscribers to access ever more reviews from our valuable archive and adding to our cultural seed bank.

New Instagram look

Advances has been delighted with the uptick in ABR Instagram followers after Will Hunt’s redesign of our page. Readers might notice fewer Facebook and Twitter posts and more LinkedIn posts. We are going where we think you are – and in search of yet more readers. Reposts, likes, and comments are always appreciated, but we also respect the choice of those many contributors and authors who tell us they are not on social media.