Poetry of Flight, the Liquid Amber Prize Anthology 2025, edited by Rose Lucas, Ali Whitelock and Willo Drummond, was launched online by Rae White on 27 November 2025
Today I’m joining you on the lands of the Jagera and Turrbal people. I pay my respects to their elders past and present. Sovereignty was never ceded.
It’s a joy and an honour to be here today to celebrate the extraordinary poets whose work fills the pages of Poetry of Flight. This anthology is a testament to the power of poetic imagination and insight in a world that often feels unmoored and uncertain. In gathering here tonight, we recognise the creativity and generosity of each poet who responded to this year’s theme of flight, and gifted us with their voices.
When the prize opened for submissions this year, the judges and editors Rose Lucas, Ali Whitelock and Willo Drummond, invited poets to ‘riff on flight as broadly as their imaginations might take them.’ And good heavens, you did not disappoint! What has emerged is a rich collection of poems in which skies feel endless, and where each poem transforms horizon into invitation.
My endorsement for the anthology describes how these poems ‘carry the reader aloft to unveil the infinite muses of sky and cosmos.’ I want to return to that idea for a moment, the notion of the infinite, because it characterises not only the theme, but the many ways in which these poets approach it.
In this anthology, flight becomes a portal. Through it, we encounter ‘freedom and departure, courage and longing, weightlessness and transcendence’. Rather than limiting itself to a singular interpretation, Poetry of Flight opens up an entire sky of metaphor, meaning, and collective experiences. The result is a volume that feels both timely and timeless, deeply grounded in our shared human fragility yet soaring with the hope of possibility.
Flight as grief, trauma, and letting go
One of the thematic currents running through the anthology is the idea of flight as letting go. In a world that is currently enduring conflict, upheaval, and uncertainty, this year’s theme resonated deeply with ideas of departure, mortality, and memory.
The judges’ selection of Victoria McGrath’s ‘The Crow’ as first prize winner speaks to this. This insightful prose poem uses the silhouette of the crow to explore death and the ‘grey communal pain’ that is ‘gnawing at our earthliness.’ Through a mesmeric current of irony and observation, McGrath reminds us of the ways we try to rationalise the unbearable, when ‘life plods interminably on and fuck all follows the script’.
Similarly, Annie Hunter’s ‘Aerial’ awarded second prize, is an intimate poem about the weight of grief and the ritual of release of letting go. This poem gently follows the weight of a father’s body in the moments before he is launched ‘into the effervescing air’ and takes flight. Hunter’s poem is a reminder that flight is sometimes the tenderest gesture we can offer: to uplift a life, one last time.
Other poems in the anthology explore grief with the same delicate courage. Carolyn Masel’s shortlisted poem ‘New Zealand Bound’ takes us on a journey through place and memory, using careful imagery to trace a path of decline that transforms, ultimately, into a flight of farewell.
Flight as trauma, survival, and inheritance
Another sub-theme that emerges powerfully in Poetry of Flight is the idea of flight as a response to trauma. In many poems, flight is not chosen, it is necessary. It becomes a brace against impact, a means of escape, or a way of navigating the echoes of generational trauma.
Angela Costi’s ‘The Brace Position’ captures this with visceral immediacy. The poem examines how trauma, especially inherited trauma, can erupt unexpectedly into the present. The ‘harvest of stars’ outside the plane window brings forth memories of ‘her grandmother’s candle, the way it kept watch / as they prayed to ancestors and saints,’ and a demonstration of the brace position transforms into ‘her sister under their bunk, hands over ears’. Costi harnesses symbolism to show how the past inhabits the body, shaping our reactions, our fears, and our flights.
Flight as selfhood and identity
Hannah McCann’s ‘Griffin/Girl’ introduces yet another lens – the connection between flight and selfhood. McCann explores the ways femininity is constructed and perceived, and how narratives about girlhood and womanhood shape the stories we tell about ourselves, and the stories others tell about us. The lines ‘she wavered like a gem / changing in the light / it was they who moved’ speaks to the fragility of identity when viewed through the gaze of others, and to the possibilities of transformation.
Nikki Viveca’s ‘Augury’ uses the refrain ‘Let us be birds’ as an invitation to step beyond constraint and into chosen forms of being. Through a celebration of creativity and gender expression, the poem encourages vibrant, self-fashioned embodiments: ‘I’ll do slam poetry as a rosella / And you can do genderfuck drag as a lorikeet’. The wish, ‘Let us be birds that shine fluorescent / In each other’s secret light’, shows us there’s a shared radiance found in community and recognition, and that identity flourishes most fully when seen, held, and illuminated by others.
Flight as witnessing and observation
In many of these poems, flight becomes witnessing – a moment of quiet observation that lifts mind and body. This is beautifully expressed in Kim Kenyon’s Highly Commended poem, ‘The view under the bridge south of Kingscliff, at 5am’. The poem brings us into ‘Sleek estuarine mornings’ observing a fisherman ‘Still as a curlew.’ Kenyon invites us into a meditative space where flight isn’t action but intention and observation.
Cathy Altmann’s ‘Feelers’ turns attentive looking into reverence, observing a ladybird sitting on a finger, cleaning themselves, its tiny rituals becoming a lesson in care. In the close-up shimmer of its form – ‘the three segments / of its body are black / and move like oil / under a lacquered / shell’ – the poem invites us to witness the luminous complexity held within the smallest lives.
Simone King’s ‘Watching the planned destruction of the Cassini spacecraft’ is another such poem. King writes from the hush of cosmic vigil, declaring, ‘I witness your final voyage / projected in real time,’ as though keeping watch over a beloved companion crossing a last horizon. The spacecraft’s long service becomes an act of devotion (‘Your mission has been devotion’) transforming scientific endeavour into a deeply human moment of awe, grief, and honour.
Flight as hope and transcendence
At its heart, Poetry of Flight is not only concerned with what we flee, but with what we seek. Hope is the quiet undercurrent running through the entire collection: sometimes defiant, sometimes luminous, sometimes fragile, but always present.
Amanda Anastasi’s ‘The Tern’ threads hope through the tern’s vast journey ‘from one pole to the other,’ suggesting that hope can be found in the brave pursuit of the far horizon. The poem affirms that ‘Journeying is the only way to know what you seek exists,’ and concludes with the quiet, powerful lines: ‘To be small yet determined is the only way to begin.’
The editors noted that, in a world full of suffering and uncertainty, the theme of flight felt particularly resonant. And when reading these poems, one feels this deeply. The anthology is filled with moments where the human spirit lifts in spite of everything. Poems that navigate inequality and darkness still find ways to crack open and let in the light. They offer readers a chance to ascend, even if only briefly, beyond the heaviness of the world.
This is one of the great gifts of poetry: its ability to render the most complex and messy human experiences into language that resonates, uplifts, and soars. These poems, each in their own way, gift us with ‘the language of flight,’ helping us to imagine what might be possible beyond fear, beyond grief, beyond gravity.
Closing
What strikes me most about Poetry of Flight is its multiplicity. There is no singular story of flight here, no dominant metaphor or definition. Instead, we encounter fifty-one distinct skies, fifty-one distinct poems.
The judges described their process of reading these poems aloud to each other, experiencing them from different perspectives, and travelling with the poets ‘in your various flights of exploration.’ I think that sense of shared journey is exactly what makes this anthology so significant. Each poet contributes to the larger constellation of this anthology, transforming the simple idea of flight into an extraordinary collection of voices.
As we celebrate Poetry of Flight today, let us carry forward what these poems have taught us: that even in times of darkness, we can find ways to ascend; and that poetry, in all its fierce gentleness, continues to give us the language we need to take off, to rise skyward, and to soar.
– Rae White
Rae White is a queer non-binary transgender writer, and author of poetry collections Milk Teeth (UQP 2018) and Exactly As I Am (UQP 2022). Rae was awarded the Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize in 2017, and has been shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, Queensland Literary Awards, and Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. Their debut picture book All the Colours of the Rainbow (Lothian Children’s Books), with illustrations by Sha’an d’Anthes, was published in January 2025. Rae is the Creative Director and Founder of Uplift Poetry, a community poetry initiative; and the Founding Editor of #EnbyLife, a journal for non-binary and gender diverse creatives.
Poetry of Flight, the Liquid Amber Prize Anthology 2025 is available from https://liquidamberpress. com.au/product/poetry-of-flight-the-liquid-amber-prize-anthology/
