(click to purchase)

Congratulations
Damen O'Brien
winner of the
2020 Newcastle Poetry Prize 

$25,000 Prize Pool

sponsored by

First Prize $15,000
Damen O'Brien
for
Measures of Truth

Second Prize $5,000
Anthony Lawrence
for
'Keepers'

Third Prize $1,000
Rob Edmonds 
for
'The Long Jetty Ghazals'

2 Commended Awards
Julie Manning
for
'Groupie Acapella'

Alex Skovron
for
'The Light We Convert'

Judy Johnson
Local Award
for
'The Ways You Haven't Left Me'

Harri Jones Memorial Prize
for a poet under 36 years
Peter Ramm
for
'Rock Hopping'

HWC Members' Award
Christopher Kelen
for
'the bees'

The 2020 Newcastle Poetry Prize 


The poets published in the 
2020 Newcastle Poetry Prize Anthology are:
(in alphabetical order by surname)

Click here to purchase a previous anthology

Thank you to our 2020 Judges

Mike Ladd is an Australian poet and radio presenter and producer. Mike Ladd was the founding producer of Poetica, a weekly program of poetry broadcast on ABC Radio National. Poetica was first broadcast in February 1997 and continued until February 2015. Influenced by the poetry of the Greek Anthology, the ancient Chinese and Japanese poets, Robert Frost, the European Minimalists and Nazim Hikmet, Ladd’s poetry often combines natural elements with the suburban and industrial. He has published 9 poetry collections and is the author of several video poems. Read more about Mike here.

Born in England, poet Judith Beveridge moved with her family to Australia in 1960 and earned a BA at the University of Technology, Sydney. Beveridge’s poems model the interaction of spirituality, the natural world, and selfhood. She is the author of poetry collections that include ‘The Domesticity of Giraffes’ (1987); ‘Accidental Grace’ (1996), which won the Wesley Michel Wright Award; ‘Wolf Notes’ (2003), which won the Judith Wright Calanthe Award and the Victorian Premier’s Award; and ‘Storm and Honey’ (2009). Beveridge edited The Best Australian Poetry 2006 and co-edited, with Jill Jones and Louise Wakeling, A Parachute of Blue: First Choice of Australian Poets (1995). Beveridge’s additional honors include the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal, the Dame Mary Gilmore Award, the New South Wales Premier’s Award, and the Josephine Ulrick Poetry Prize as well as having several poems published over the years in the Newcastle Poetry Prize. Judith served as poetry editor of the literary magazine Meanjin and has taught at Newcastle and Sydney Universities. Read sample works by Judith Beveridge here

History of the Newcastle Poetry Prize

2019 Newcastle Poetry Prize

The $25,000 Newcastle Poetry Prize generously donated by the Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic) from the University of Newcastle prizewinners:

1st Prize: Chloe Wilson 
Soft Serve 
$15,000

2nd Prize: Audrey Molloy
Mother, I am Your Mother Now 
$5,000

3rd Prize: Dimitra Harvey 
Triptych
$1,000

Commended Awards: $250
Anthony Lawrence
Epistemology

Jayne Fenton Keane
For every year the shark lived another word for snow was born

Local Award: $500
Steve Armstrong
Thirteen Ways to Know My Grandfather

Harri Jones Prize for a poet under 36 years: $500
Caitlin Maling
From What We Have Come to Sea: Lizard Island Poems

HWC Members' Award: $200
Christopher (Kit) Kelen
Hardanger Set

Click here to purchase the 2019 anthology

or choose a past anthology

Caitlin Maling, winner of the Harri Jones prize 
(for a poet under 36 years)