How a Charters Towers poet won $10,000 for bush tales

Brenda-Joy Pritchard is a renowned North Queensland poet, claiming a multitude of awards including one of Australia's richest poetry competitions, the $10,000 Cloncurry Prize.

Ms Pritchard was the 2022 Cloncurry Prize winner for her poem, Where Heros Abide and is now encouraging others to tell the tales of the outback also.

"The people of the outback are really amazing and when Cloncurry came up with the Cloncurry Prize the second year, it was like the poem I wrote was a combination of everything I had felt about outback people. Their spirit just infiltrates everything they do, their resilience, the way they work together.

"My poem was about someone who lived on a station, had grown older and moved to town, and then for health reasons moved to the city.

"It captured how they felt leaving behind the station life and I was also thinking about Dame Mary Gilmore and her husband who is buried in Cloncurry and the end of the poem was about taking the ashes of your beloved back to the place where that person had spent a lot of their life."

Ms Pritchard first discovered bush poetry in 2006 when she first moved to Charters Towers.

"I hadn't really understood that it had a lot of wonderful elements to it, I got thoroughly involved and started writing and travelling with my husband," Ms Pritchard said.

"We spent 12 years going around doing bush poetry competitions and from there we moving into judging and performing at various venues, lots of them in the outback."

Ms Pritchard has found much inspiration from travelling outback Australia and talking to bush people.

"Some have been about Charters Towers and North Queensland but most of my poems are about the bush," she said.

"I went with my husband out to Camooweal seven years in a row, and travelled to other places outback too.

"We went around to all the outback festivals, so a lot of my poems were about the outback...and all the things that make the outback such a special place.

"Like the challenges of distance and how it influences so many lives, the issues like droughts and floods and life in general."

Ms Pritchard said bush poetry "speaks to you" and was set like music.

"I love the rhyme and the metre, I like that format, because you have a structure and the words flow without impeding," she said.

"The actual skills of bush poetry allows the essence of it to come through unhindered, it's not awkward at all, it's wonderful."

This year Ms Pritchard is a judge for the Cloncurry Prize Poetry Competition and its theme is 'Standing on the Shoulders of Giants', through the lens of Outback Australia.

"Entrants need to be sure they are following any competition guidelines. You can write a fantastic poem but if it doesn't follow the guidelines, it isn't going to be in the running. You need to be aware of what the organisers are wanting, like the theme.

"It can't just be a listing of something, it has to speak to the heart and bring out the essence of being Australian particularly for the outback poems.

"Also your poem has to be provocative, balanced and it still has to have a beautiful language and flow to it. That's what makes poetry so special, the musical quality."

"In offering a competition with such huge prize money, I think it is one of the highest in Australia... Cloncurry have thought of this innovative way of bringing not only the poetry alive but keeping their town alive, showcasing it and letting Australia know 'we have a wonderful spirit out here'."

Entries for the Cloncurry Prize Poetry Competition closes May 3 and the winner will be announced on June 21.

Find more information about the competition on the Cloncurry Shire Council webiste.