Poet Adam Aitken won the 2021 Patrick White Literary Award, honoring an author who has "made a significant but inadequately recognized contribution to Australian literature." Established by Patrick White with the proceeds of his 1973 Nobel Prize in Literature, the award is worth A$15,000 (about US$10,690).
Aitken is the author of several books of poetry, including Archipelago, shortlisted in 2018 for the Kenneth Slessor Prize and the Prime Minister's Literary Award for poetry, and the 2016 autobiography 100 Letters Home, which was longlisted for the 2017 ALS Gold Medal. His forthcoming collection Revenants will be published in February.
He told the Age that winning the prize "makes me feel a lot more confident. After my first book was published in 1985, I didn't write for 10 years afterwards; I couldn't repeat the momentum.... I am very grateful to my comrades and colleagues who have devoted their lives to poetry. And I hope it keeps the people who pick up my work and publish the poems going."