Writing Competition – Time Travel

Clearly you only have to nominate ‘time travel’ as the subject of a writing competition to get people thinking.

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Here we have a series of original and thoughtful responses to the topic. What comes through in many of the entries is an endearing sense of freedom, a willingness to play with the form – a plastic sense of possibilities.

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These are reflective engagements with a subject that exercises all of us, but especially those who find themselves in trouble, disrupted, on the outer.

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Still, there is humour here – mostly dry humour, plus little peeps of biographical information. There is a speculative openness about what life does – to ourselves, to those around us, to this endangered planet. Mostly, though, there is a spirit of intent, a stubborn yearning – despite everything that has happened to us or been done to us – to play a greater role in determining our place in the continuum.

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I commend all the entrants and wish them well. I’ve been impressed by the spirit of playfulness and experimentation. Writing, however long one does it, is never easy, never fully mastered, but the more humour and lightness one brings to is, the easier it gets.

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About Peter Ross:

Peter Rose is a poet, novelist, memoirist, playwright and critic. Since 1990 he has published seven poetry collections, most recently Attention, Please! (2025). His poetry has won and been shortlisted for numerous literary awards, including the Prime Minister’s Literary Award, the Victorian Premier’s Prize for Poetry, and the Age Book of the Year. His family memoir, Rose Boys (2001) won the National Biography Award. Rose also writes and performs short plays with The Highly Strung Players. Throughout the 1990s Rose was a publisher at Oxford University Press. From 2001 to 2025 Rose was Editor and CEO of Australian Book Review, the country’s premier literary magazine. During this time he worked with more than 1500 writers around Australia.