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Professional writers with extensive experience in children’s literature and poetry are selected to judge the Dorothea Mackellar Poetry Awards. Typically there are two judges each year and they work as a team. Winning entries are chosen because they:
- stand out from the rest because the poet’s approach to the subject matter is individual or “different”
- have a distinctive style
- are a personal response to a situation the poet cares deeply about
- show that the poet is attuned to his or her surroundings
- touch deep emotions
- contain powerfully understated last lines
- resound with metaphors and similes that captivate the reader
- contain lines which are a treasure of clear, detailed sensory images
- are skilfully constructed, with memorable lines and poetic devices such as alliteration, rhythm and internal rhyme
- are thought-provoking.
In 2010, the Dorothea Mackellar Poetry Awards will be judged by author Joanne Horniman and educationist Dr Robert Kimber.
Joanne Horniman
 Joanne Horniman writes young adult novels. She is the author of numerous books including the 2002 CBC Honour Book, Mahalia, and Secret Scribbled Notebooks, which was shortlisted in the Older Readers section of the 2005 CBC Book of the Year Awards, and won the 2005 Queensland Premier’s Literary Award for best Young Adult Novel.
She has worked as the Assistant Editor on the NSW Department of School Education’s School Magazine, lectured in children’s literature and writing to trainee teachers, taught adult literacy at TAFE, and been a judge for the NSW Premier’s Awards.
Dr Robert Kimber
 Dr Robert Kimber has extensive experience in English, Drama and Speech with poetry and the theatre his over-riding interests. He is a former DAAD Scholar to West Germany and a Fulbright Scholar to the USA. He has made a career of training teachers in the Arts and Humanities and has worked in many parts of Australia as well as in the USA, England and Spain.
His writings include a number of scripts for ABC radio under the title Drama in Action, subsequently published as Communication Through Drama, Parts I and II, in which his emphasis is upon encouraging the use of language and the creative exploration of ideas. He has an assorted number of other writings, literary comment, criticism, songs, poetry and stage plays including Run, Run Away, presented at La Mama Theatre in Melbourne, Ants and Splinters, an opera for the very young, and The Bouncing Bunyip of Bandicoot Reach, both of which have been widely performed. More recently he has written with musician Noel Fidge the libretti for two cantatas, namely Stargazers, a work for jazz band and choir, and The Rattle of the Jig, based upon the Cornish settlement at the Moonta copper mines. He has also published through the University of Barcelona, essays on Aboriginal performance and the history of Australian playwriting.
Throughout his years as a teacher, scholar and examinar he has adjudicated numerous awards in performance and writing.
www.penguin.com.au/authors
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