Praise 

In the words of the late Novocastrian poet, Bill Iden, “Newcastle’s environment makes its poets”.

“The Newcastle Poetry Prize has brought many fine Australian poets to national attention… It not only gives much needed financial reward to the winning poet but increases their media profile and likelihood of achieving further publication.”
~ Mike Ladd, Poetica, ABC Radio National 

“It proves that there is poetry in money after all, that a major prize like the Newcastle Poetry Prize can call in being poems that seem to say something that has never been said before, or say something that we all know in such new and memorable ways that it reads like a new knowledge, a new sense of future.”
~ Jennifer Harrison and Kim Cheng Boey, 2012 judges

“The Newcastle Poetry Prize is a unique award not only because it attracts submissions from an eclectic and diverse range of Australian writers each year but also because it publishes an anonymously selected collection of the best poems. This year we celebrate the award’s 30th anniversary and we appreciatively note the award’s longevity, its reputation and prestige.”
~ Jennifer Harrison and Keri Glastonbury, 2011 judges

“Australian poetry is emerging as one of the country’s most significant cultural achievements. There will come a time when the part played in this by the Newcastle Poetry Prize will be part of our national cultural history… No other city in Australia is so closely associated with such an important prize. The fact that Newcastle can manage a prize like this, and neither Sydney, nor Melbourne, for instance, can, is a matter for some wry observation.”
~ Martin Langford, NSW Poetry Development Officer

“It is no exaggeration to say that this Prize places Newcastle in the forefront of Australian poetry patronage. It encourages by rewarding excellent writing, it recognizes innovation, it garners new readers of poetry and new writers, and it helps to launch many careers, since being included is the year’s touchstone for excellence in poetry. It was the publication of three of my poems in the 1983 anthology that set me firmly on my path as an established poet.”
~ Jan Owen, 2008 Open Section Judge

“The Newcastle Poetry Prize is seen throughout this country as offering the major award for individual poems or suites of poems in Australia. Over the years it has consistently attracted the best poetic talents this country has produced. The reputation of this prize has put Newcastle on the map in cultural circles.”
~ Ron Pretty AM, Australian Poetry Centre

‘It’s always a delight to be short-listed for the Newcastle Poetry Prize, which is, I feel, Australia’s most significant poetry award. Some would use the word ‘prestigious’ rather than ‘significant’, but poetry isn’t and shouldn’t be about prestige. It’s about understanding what it is to be human. In this regard, the Newcastle Poetry Prize is unique in that it allows significant space to explore our humanity by encouraging the submission of extended pieces of poetry. I and so many other poets are grateful for The University of Newcastle’s ongoing and substantial sponsorship of such a prize. I would also like to thank the judges, Judith Beveridge and Robert Gray, for their acknowledgement of the place of prose poetry in our literature by short-listing my work for this award. I see a prose poem as a poem with one long line. It often finds itself out in the cold, neither regarded as one thing nor the other, and I’m delighted to see this important form acknowledged here.”
~ John Foulcher, Commended award, 2015

“At the 2006 prize giving night, the University of Newcastle announced that in recognition of the value of the Newcastle Poetry Prize brings to the region as well as Australian poetry, it will continue its sponsorship a further five years, up until 2011. This was welcome news to anyone who believes in supporting the Arts, something not afforded in some countries at all. Sitting in the audience I was very proud to be living in Newcastle.”
~ Debra Hely, Past President of Poetry at the Pub, Newcastle

“If poets can be said to have careers, then winning this prize is definitely an enormous career highlight. Its status as the major prize for a single poem in Australia and the substantial amount of money awarded make it a huge honour to have won. The fact that the competition encourages the longer poem is also very significant, as it’s not easy to get longer poems, or sequences of poems, published at all. To publish thirty or so really high quality long poems in such fine anthologies every year is itself a great contribution made to the poetry world.”
~ Ross Gillet, winner.

“I have been aware of the central position the Newcastle Poetry Prize holds since the early Eighties when it was the Mattara Prize. I entered frequently then and since then I’ve seen it evolve into undoubtedly the pre-eminent poetry prize in Australia. As such I regard it as of immense significance to Poetry in general, and to me  —  since in my case I have been somewhat reticent about my work and winning or appearing in the anthology has been highly important personally.  I recognise many of the contributors over the years simply by their repeated appearances, so that we share a kind of collegiality.  In the perilous community of poets the NPP is a life-line and an anchor.”
~ John Watson, 2nd Prize.

“Writing poetry can feel like slogging away in a one-person show with no audience. While the Newcastle Poetry Prize provides a generous financial incentive to persevere, the opportunity to have work read by such eminent judges is a gift in itself. Receiving an award and being published in the NPP anthology encourages me to continue, with fresh resolve, an exciting, exhausting endless game of hide-and-seek with words.”
~ Joanne Ruppin, Commended

Anthologies and the Judging Process
The Newcastle Poetry Prize is unique among Australian poetry prizes for producing an accompanying anthology. The Anthology provides a rare opportunity for being published outside of the literary journals and internet magazines. Alongside UQP’s Best Australian Poetry and BlackInc’s Best Australian Poems, the Newcastle Poetry Prize Anthology offers an annual snapshot of the thriving state of Australian Poetry, and in particular longer poems. In the words of Highly Commended poet in the 2007 Competition and The Australian’s Poetry Editor, Barry Hill: “The Newcastle Poetry Prize should be congratulated for being such a patron of the long poem — a phenomenon which helps sustain seriousness in Australian poetry, and which tests judges as they should be tested.”

A distinctive feature of the Newcastle Poetry Prize is that it is judged anonymously, meaning judges do not see the names of poets on each entry. This anonymous judging process gives both established and emerging poets an equal opportunity for recognition and publication. Each year new judges are selected to judge the Prize.

Sponsor
The University of Newcastle provides a prize pool of $25,000 and has been the major sponsor of the Prize since 2005.