VPLAs People’s Choice AwardVote Now

VPLAs People’s Choice AwardVote Now

Holocene Pointbreaks

Title: Holocene Pointbreaks
Author: Jake Goetz
Publisher: Puncher & Wattmann

Shortlist: Poetry

Written amid the COVID lockdowns of 2020–21, Jake Goetz’s Holocene Pointbreaks presents a triptych of long poems that link three unique ecologies located on the Countries of the Dharawal and Eora Nations (Sydney and the South Coast). An eco-archival experiment in poetic composition, or poetic composting, the work interrogates colonial histories of resource extraction, taking the reader from morning reflections on one of Australia’s most polluted urban waterways, the ‘Cooks River’, to a discursive rumination on cetaceans while whale watching from the cliffs of Kamay, before digging down into Australia’s colonial ‘coalture’ on the NSW South Coast.

Judges’ report

Holocene Pointbreaks is an exquisitely crafted collection that opens new possibilities for both documentary poetry and eco-poetics. Jake Goetz balances rigorous intellectual inquiry with fluid form and voice, rendering complexities of history, settler colonialism, and place-based investigation in almost sculptural relief. The peripatetic nature of Goetz's exploration guides readers to a slow, careful pace, compelling us to fully inhabit and account for our bodily impact on the world. Holocene Pointbreaks demonstrates the potency of language while arguing that we should question its absolute primacy and attend with other kinds of care to this epoch and our role in it.

Extract

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About the Author

Jake Goetz

VPLA book photography by Sarah Walker

The 2025 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards are proudly supported by the Victorian Government through the Community Support Fund and Creative Victoria.