Stella Prize 2023: Sarah Holland-Batt wins $60,000 for her poetry collection, The Jaguar

Sarah Holland-Batt has won the $60,000 Stella Prize for her intimate and affecting poetry collection The Jaguar, about her relationship with her late father, who suffered from Parkinson's disease. The judges' report described the collection, Holland-Batt's third, as "accessible, lyrical and wise", and the poems about the poet and her father as "tender memorable". " Chair of the judging panel, author Alice Pung, wrote that Holland-Batt's book "unflinchingly observes the complex emotions of caring for loved ones, contending with our own mortality and above all – continuing to live". The 2023 Stella Prize shortlist We Come with This Place by Debra Dank Big Beautiful Female Theory by Eloise Grills The Jaguar by Sarah Holland-Batt Hydra by Adriane Howell Indelible City by Louisa Lim Bad Art Mother by Edwina Preston In a statement responding to her win, Holland-Batt said: "I wrote this book during an intensely challenging period, as my father was dying, and just after. "I think poetry's task in general is to look hard at the things that we resist imagining," says Holland-Batt.