CIPF 2024 - David Harsent & Sarah Holland-Batt

David Harsent has published thirteen collections of poetry. Legion won the Forward Prize. Night was triple shortlisted in the UK and won the Griffin International Poetry Prize. Fire Songs won the T.S. Eliot Prize. A Broken Man in Flower, Harsent’s versions of the poems written by Yannis Ritsos while in prison camps and under house arrest at the time of the Greek junta, was published in 2023. His latest collection, Skin, appeared in February 2024. Harsent has collaborated with several composers, though most often with Harrison Birtwistle. Birtwistle/Harsent collaborations have been performed at major venues worldwide.

Sarah Holland-Batt is an award-winning Australian poet, editor and critic, and the author of three books of poems—most recently The Jaguar—and a book of essays, Fishing for Lightning, a collection of her columns on contemporary Australian poetry written for The Australian newspaper. Her books have received many of Australia’s major honours for poetry, including the Prime Minister’s Literary Award, the Stella Prize, The Australian Book of the Year, and the Margaret and Colin Roderick Award. Her Selected Poems is forthcoming from Bloodaxe Books in 2024. She presently is Professor of Poetry at the Queensland University of Technology.