Creatures of Memory - Judith Beveridge & Stephen Edgar

6pm for 6.30pm Thursday 3rd December

Join us for the launch of Creatures of Memory – a collection of alternating poems old and new about the natural world by Judith Beveridge and Stephen Edgar, illustrated by Oliver Watts. 

In what promises to be a lively, thought-provoking encounter, Judy and Stephen will interview each other about the poems in the book and their contrasting approaches to the mysterious processes of creation. Not to mention ‘life, the universe and everything’.

For decades Judith Beveridge and Stephen Edgar have served as distinguished members of the Australian poetry pantheon. Their work has been published in separate luminous careers while they lived quietly together as wife and husband, each collecting just about every glittering prize the local literary firmament offers. 

Now for the first time, they join forces in Creatures of Memory, a collection of poems old and new about the natural world, laced with vibrant, joyful paper collages by Sydney artist Oliver Watts. 

Creatures of Memory contains multitudes, grouped in four habitats: birds, insects, land animals and marine life. Living creatures remembered in all their varied beauty, at times glimpsed in stillness, at times red in tooth and claw. 


Judith Beveridge has published eight collections of poetry and has edited several anthologies. Her book Sun Music: New and Selected Poems was awarded the 2019 Prime Minister’s Award for Poetry. Her latest book is Tintinnabulum, which was shortlisted for The UK Laurel Prize and the Judith Wright Calanthe Award. She is a recipient of the Christopher Brennan Award and the Philip Hodgins Memorial Award. In 2025 she was awarded a Creative Australia Lifetime Achievement Award in Literature. She is currently a co-editor of The Marrow International Poetry and was poetry editor of Meanjin for ten years.

Stephen Edgar has published fourteen collections of poetry. The most recent is Imaginary Archive (PSP 2025). The Strangest Place: New and Selected Poems received the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry in 2021. His previous three books, Transparencies, Exhibits of the Sun, and Eldershaw, were all shortlisted for the same award. He was awarded the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal in 2006 and was joint winner of the Colin Roderick Award in 2014 for Eldershaw.

Oliver Watts is a Sydney-based artist and academic who was a lecturer at Sydney College for the Arts from 2011–17 and served for several years as Head Curator of Artbank. He was a founding member of the Chaser as a cartoonist and illustrator. He holds an MFA in painting and a PhD in art history. He has been a finalist in many art prizes including the Archibald Prize (2021, 2023, 2024), the Glover Prize, the Helen Lempriere Travelling Scholarship, and the Brett Whiteley Travelling Scholarship, and is the recipient of the Noel Chettle Art Prize. His work is held in the National Museum of Australia, Artbank and the Reserve Bank of Australia collections. He shows with Chalk Horse gallery.