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Karin Schimke wins 2014 Ingrid Jonker prize for Bare & Breaking

by Colleen Higgs | Sep 28, 2014 | News, People

Congratulations to Karin Schimke for winning the Ingrid Jonker prize for her debut collection of poetry, Bare & Breaking. As a publishing house, we couldn’t be more pleased or prouder of you and for you!

Press release

Karin Schimke wins 2014 Ingrid Jonker Prize for an ‘unapologetically erotic and intimate’ collection with a perfect narrative arc

Three judges have returned a resounding verdict that places Karin Schimke as the clear winner of the 2014 Ingrid Jonker Prize for a debut collection of poetry. In their citations, Bare & breaking (published by Modjaji in 2012) is described as ‘head and shoulders above the other works in terms of craft, pace, depth of content, and having a clearly established and robust aesthetic’. Schimke is praised for ‘the elegance and precision of [her] craft in a volume marked by ‘sensuousness’ and ‘unapologetically erotic and intimate’ content.

Two judges singled Bare & breaking out for its ‘internal arc’ which takes us from love and unease through crisis and fury, to numbness, grief, and finally, redemption, where the poet clambers at last to a fragile place of safety. … Throughout, the writer bears in mind the reader, connecting her private pain to a more universal one as in the final poem ‘The Quiet Way Back’. …While carried forward by her story, we are ultimately included in a collective grief that defines us all as human.

This year’s judges were Beverly Rycroft, Liesl Jobson and Professor Geoffrey Haresnape. Judges of the Ingrid Jonker prize are unaware of one another’s identities until judging is complete.

Karin Schimke will receive her prize at a special event in Cape Town in October.

The Ingrid Jonker Prize is awarded in alternate years to the best debut collection in English or Afrikaans. The prize consists of a medal by the sculptor Bill Davis and the interest on an amount of money originally donated for this purpose by Ingrid Jonker’s friends at her ‘second funeral’ in 1965.

We at Modjaji Books are thrilled in another way too, this is the third Ingrid Jonker prize awarded to a poet that we have published. The first was Megan Hall for Fourth Child, she won the Ingrid Jonker in 2008, her book was published in 2007. And then Beverly Rycroft won the 2012 Ingrid Jonker for her collection, missing, published in 2011.

To read some of Karin’s poems from Bare & Breaking click here. By the way, Michelle McGrane’s poetry blog is a rich treasury of the work of many poets, explore further than just where you land.