Oz Hardwick -Interview

Book of the Year 2019 for Poetry

I don’t really keep my eye on awards and prizes. However, they come into view when writers I admire win them, so when Angela Readman’s dazzling short story collection Don’t Try This At Home won in 2015, I became aware of the Rubery, and had a look at what else had won in recent years – all of which turned out to be work that I liked (yes, it prompted me to purchase a few books I hadn’t come across). This prompted me to submit Learning to Have Lost, as I thought my work might appeal to the judges.

The book itself sort of came about by chance. In 2018 I was beginning to establish a reputation in very small circles, and I was invited to be one of the Poets in Residence at a festival in Canberra. As part of this, I was invited to publish a chapbook to be sold at the festival, under the auspices of the International Poetry Studies Institute in Canberra, and published by the excellent small press Recent Work. I had been writing almost exclusively prose poetry for a couple of years by then – the connections made thereby leading to the invitation – so I gathered a selection which in various tangential ways spoke to the loss of my parents. I like to think it’s because it was such a wonderful book – though it’s actually because, unlike previous Poets in Residence, I promoted it extensively – it became to only one from the festival to get a reprint (take that, Simon Armitage!), and it still sells the occasional copy.

"Winning the Rubery Award was, I think, a further validation, being awarded by people I didn’t know at all"

Winning the Rubery Award was, I think, a further validation, being awarded by people I didn’t know at all, coming to my work with no prior expectations that I know of. Everything on the short list, of course, was very good indeed

– and I’m sure there will have been excellent books that didn’t make it – and there’s something about being welcomed into that company. Yes, winning a prize is wonderful – I don’t have many trophies (two, to be precise, the other being voted for by students at my university’s Golden Jubilee) – so it sits very prominently on one of the bookshelves in my cramped home study, in front of my Richard Brautigan collection (an enduring delight), and next to a copy of the only 7” picture disc I’ve ever performed on (B-side of Incubus Lovechild’s “The Aliens Within”, pop-pickers – an unashamed acknowledgment of Robert Calvert’s poetry contribution to Hawkwind). Significantly, it alerts people who might not otherwise know, that my work exists. I publish with small presses who don’t get reviewed in the big papers, and I write in a form that isn’t for everyone anyway (I’ve been called a “neo-surrealist prose poet,” and I’m happy – indeed flattered – with that), so for someone to wave and say “Hey! This is good!” is rare and enormously appreciated. It’s very hard to be noticed outside the mainstream, and an award like this really helps.

It alerts people who might not otherwise know, that my work exists.

I write obsessively, first thing every morning, 365 days of the year. I’m autistic, and it’s one of my grounding behaviours. I’m also fortunate in that I’m part of a small network of prose poets, with whom I share drafts on a regular basis, a number of whose work I find dazzling. Cassandra Atherton and Paul Hetherington know pretty much all there is to know about that mode of writing as scholars, and their own poetry is superb. Dominique Hecq, Jen Webb, and Kimberly K. Williams, too, and Carrie Etter’s Grief’s Alphabet is an impressive recent collection. Of course, I draw from other forms, mostly experimental: Luke Kennard’s a favourite, Amelia Walker’s Alogopoeisis is a breathtakingly original work on trauma, and Andy Jackson’s Human Looking is a visceral collection of work on the politics of embodiment.

These are all buzzing around my head as I go about shaping my next full collection. As I’m doing this, I have another chapbook in the pipeline for Spring 2026 with Hedgehog, who I’m deeply saddened to see are shortly to be no more. It’s called Actioning the New University and is an absurdist sequence on death by corporatisation – I may well submit it for the Poetry Award next year. Aside from that, I’m co-editing a collection of essays on contemporary ekphrasis with Amina Alyal, with whom I love collaborating on projects, which will be published by Routledge in 2026, and I have a couple of book chapters on Creative Writing and neurodivergence in press, too. And then there are the several other projects that are gathering their own momentum, regardless of my intentions.