Sarah Holland-Batt

Sarah Holland-Batt (born 1982) is a contemporary Australian poet, critic and academic.

Sarah Holland-Batt
Born22 December 1982
Southport, Queensland
NationalityAustralian
EducationPhD, MFA, MPhil, BA (Hons I)
Alma materUniversity of Queensland, NYU
Known forPoetry
Notable work
The Hazards and Aria

Biography

Born in Southport, Queensland, Sarah Holland-Batt grew up in Australia and Denver, Colorado.[1] She was educated at the University of Queensland, where she received First Class Honours in Literary Studies, an MPhil and PhD, and at New York University, where she was a Fulbright Scholar[2] and attained an M.F.A.

Holland-Batt is the author of two award-winning volumes of poetry, Aria and The Hazards, and the editor of two anthologies of contemporary Australian poetry, and is the editor of Black Inc's The Best Australian Poems 2016 and The Best Australian Poems 2017.[3] Aria, Holland-Batt's first book, received the 2007 Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize, and was subsequently published by the University of Queensland Press in 2008. Aria subsequently won the Anne Elder Award and the Judith Wright Prize, and was shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, the Judith Wright Calanthe Award and the Mary Gilmore Prize.

The Hazards, Holland-Batt's second volume, was published in 2015, and went on to win Australia's foremost prize for poetry, the Prime Minister's Literary Awards, in 2016. The Hazards was also shortlisted for numerous other prestigious awards, including the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, the Judith Wright Calanthe Award, the John Bray Poetry Award at the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature, and the Western Australian Premier's Book Awards Poetry Prize, and was named as a book of the year in The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, and Australian Book Review.[4]

Holland-Batt is the recipient of international fellowships from Yaddo and MacDowell colonies, a Hawthornden Castle residency, and an Australia Council for the Arts Literature Residency at the B.R. Whiting Studio in Rome. Her poems have appeared in numerous international newspapers, periodicals and magazines, including The New Yorker and Poetry, among others, and have been widely anthologised. From 2016–2018, she was awarded a Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship from the Myer Foundation, the first poet to ever receive the honour.[5]

Holland-Batt has served as a judge of the Prime Minister's Literary Awards, the Queensland Literary Awards Glendower Award, the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize, the Arts Queensland Val Vallis Award, and the Australian Book Review's Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize,.[6] From 2014–2019, she was the poetry editor of Island Magazine.[7] She is presently Chair of Australian Book Review.[8]

Holland-Batt is an Associate Professor of the Creative Writing faculty at the Queensland University of Technology.[9] She is also an active critic, writing for publications including The Australian, The Monthly and Australian Book Review.[10]

Critical response
"Holland-Batt’s formal imagination transports the reader fluently through mythological, personal, artistic, geographical and historical landscapes. Violence, caused by the pursuit of beauty or truth, is appraised with virtuosity and unfailing precision. In the opening poem, 'Medusa,’ Holland-Batt gives us the striking image of the drifting mind, 'pure and poisonous', drawing in its shadow as the soul billows out. This dichotomy portends the poet’s almost surgical objectivity, her capacity for opening up subjects. Yet she animates these poems with the spirit of Perseus, courageously risking what is known for a language 'with a force that could break our lives'... Holland-Batt entwines the past into a rich and inventive lyricism of the present".

Kenneth Slessor Prize citation for The Hazards[11]

Holland-Batt's work has frequently been praised for its lyricism, linguistic precision, and metaphorical dexterity. Holland-Batt's debut collection, Aria, was described as "most impressive and haunting" by The Sydney Morning Herald, and as a "knockout" by leading Australian poetry critic Martin Duwell.[12] Writing in The Age, Robert Adamson described Aria as evidence that "Holland-Batt appears to be a major poet from the start."[13] In The Canberra Times, critic Peter Pierce likened Holland-Batt's "energetic approach to imagery" to that of Sylvia Plath, and praised her awareness of the "twin reserves of myth and metaphor."[14]

The Hazards, Holland-Batt's second volume, was praised as "a virtuoso performance" by The Sydney Morning Herald,[15] and "an absolute gem of a collection overspilling with poems of compelling urgency and dazzling accomplishment" by The Australian.[16] Writing in Australian Book Review, Cassandra Atherton commented on Holland-Batt's "stark and sumptuous lyricism" and described The Hazards as "a thrilling psycho-geographical evocation of physical and internal landscapes."[17] The judges of the Western Australian Premier's Book Prize observed that The Hazards is marked by "a kind of tough lyricism and an exacting use of language [that] makes for dramatic, assertive poetry" that imagines, "often through surprising metaphors, the 'real and imagined hazards' of living.".[18] Geoff Page, writing in The Australian, likewise noted Holland-Batt's facility with metaphor: "The Hazards is dense with metaphorical energy...in the service of substantial moral and psychological insights."[19]

Bibliography
This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

Poetry
Collections
  • Holland-Batt, Sarah (2008). Aria. St Lucia, Qld.: University of Queensland Press.
  • — (2015). The Hazards. St Lucia, Qld.: University of Queensland Press.
Anthologies (edited)
  • The Best Australian Poems 2017 (Editor) (Black Inc., 2017). ISBN 978-1-8639-5887-5
  • The Best Australian Poems 2016 (Editor) (Black Inc., 2016). ISBN 978-1-8639-5962-9
Anthologies (contributor)
  • The Best Australian Poems. (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015)
  • The Best Australian Stories. (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2011, 2012)
  • The Turnrow Anthology of Contemporary Australian Poetry. Ed. John Kinsella (Louisiana: Desperation Press/Turnrow Books, 2014).
  • Being Human. Ed. Neil Astley. (U.K.: Bloodaxe Books, 2011)
  • The Best Australian Poetry. Ed. David Brooks. (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 2008)
  • The Puncher and Wattman Anthology of Australian Poetry. Ed. John Leonard. (Sydney: Puncher & Wattman, 2010)
  • Thirty Australian Poets. Ed. Felicity Plunkett. (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 2011)
  • Young Poets: An Australian Anthology. Ed. John Leonard. (Melbourne: John Leonard Press, 2011)
List of poems
Title Year First published Reprinted/collected
Epithalamium 2018 Holland-Batt, Sarah (17 September 2018). "Epithalamium". The New Yorker. 94 (28): 52.

Book reviews
Year Review article Work(s) reviewed
2014 Holland-Batt, Sarah (September 2014). "Rough seas". Australian Book Review. 364: 12. Parrett, Favel. When the night comes. Hachette.

Awards

References
  1. New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards 2008
  2. QUT Staff Profile: Sarah Holland-Batt
  3. Books and Publishing
  5. Books and Publishing
  6. Australian Poetry Elizabeth Jolley Prize
  7. Wheeler Centre Working With Words
  8. Australian Book Review Board
  9. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 6 July 2011. Retrieved 21 August 2009.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) QUT Creative Industries News
  11. Kenneth Slessor Prize citation
  12. Australian Poetry Review
  13. Adamson, Robert (13 December 2008). "Readings of Comfort and Joy". The Age.
  14. Pierce, Peter (30 August 2008). "High Praise Indeed for Poets' Power and Potency". The Canberra Times, p. 16.CS1 maint: location (link)
  15. The Sydney Morning Herald
  16. Savige, Jaya (19 December 2015). "Books of the Year". The Weekend Australian, p. 18.CS1 maint: location (link)
  17. Australian Book Review
  18. 2016 Western Australian Premier's Book Awards Judges' Report
  19. Page, Geoff (29 August 2015). "New Poetry". The Australian, p. 21.CS1 maint: location (link)
  20. Guardian
  21. WAPLA 2016
  22. AFAL 2016
  23. NSW Premier's Prizes 2016
  24. SLQ
  25. The Australian
  26. ACT Book and Poetry Prize Winners 2009
  27. Spoiled for Choice: The Age Book of the Year Shortlist, (Books, Entertainment), Sydney Morning Herald 8 August 2009
  28. Queensland Premier's Award Shortlist
  29. Archived 5 September 2008 at Archive.today Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize
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