MACKAY PRIZE FOR POETRY

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27213, 3 December 1953, Page 13

MACKAY PRIZE FOR POETRY

AWARD TO AUCKLAND WOMAN

PROSE COMPETITION WON BY OLIVER DUFF (New Zealand. Press Association) WELLINGTON, December 2. The Jessie Mackay Memorial Prize for poetry—New Zealand’s major annual award in this field —has been awarded this year to Mary Stanley, of Auckland, for her volume, “Starveling Year,’’ published by the Pegasus Press, Christchurch. The prize of £25. awarded through the New Zealand centre of P.E.N. and subsidised by the New Zealand Literary Fund, was judged by Messrs James K. Baxter and Louis Johnson, of Wellington. A prize of £5 to be awarded annually to a young writer whose work indicates promise has been inaugurated this year, and has been made to Cherry Lockett, of Christchurch, for a group of poems which appeared in the second poetry yearbook. Until three years ago the Jessie Mackay award was made annually from a small fund set up by the P.E.N. At that time the New Zealand Literary Fund advisory committee approved it for subsidy and, consequently, the award increased in worth find importance. The last two winners were James K. Baxter and Charles Spear. In recommending Miss Stanley’s book for the year, the judges said: “This book is the work of a mature craftsman, rich in wit and intelligence.” Miss Stanley won the old Jessie Mackay award some years ago. In private life she is the wife of an Auckland poet, Kendrick Smithyman. Prose Award The Hubert Church Memorial Award for prose for 1952 has been won by Oliver Duff, of Landsdowne Valley, near Halswell. for his “Sundowner” articles in the New Zealand “Listener.” “We feel that his articles are remarkably consistent in quality and that, at least on occasions, he comes upon an apercu of gratifying profundity,” commented the judges, Messrs M. K. Joseph (Auckland) and David Hall (Dunedin). “We have also taken into account the fact that these articles have a distinctive personal tone and a flavour which, without being parochial, is wholly New Zealand.” A direct Government grant from the New Zealand Literary Fund each year brings the value of the award up to £25.