Poetry Shortlist
Title: Clean
Author: Scott-Patrick Mitchell
Publisher: Upswell Publishing
In this volume, Scott-Patrick Mitchell propels us into the seething mess of the methamphetamine crisis in Australia today. These poems roil and scratch, exploring the precarious life of addiction and its sleep deprivation. From an unsteady and unsavoury life, we are released into the joy of a recovery made through sheer hard work.
Even in the disintegration, the poet points us towards love and carries tenderness every day in memory. Scott-Patrick Mitchell’s decades of spoken-word practice has enabled a fine tuning on the page when, for so many readers, we enter into an alien zone of unknowing.
Judges' report
Visceral but compassionate, Clean captures the wild intensity of a life addled in drugs, tracing the journey from addiction to recovery. There is an urgency to its imagery and voice, channelling not only the nervy tension surrounding this taboo issue, but also the dislocation wrought by the loss of home and the disorientation of altered mental states: substances, sleeplessness, the elation of queer desire. That Scott-Patrick Mitchell has mastered both performance and page is evident in their command of wordplay and double entendre, enjambment and rhythm. Searing, sometimes tender and unforgettable, this empathetic collection brings to light that which society has consigned to the shadows.
Extract
An extract from Clean is available here.