The 2020 Newcastle Poetry Prize
opens Saturday 21st March
World Poetry Day
Click to Enter Your Poem
$25,000 Prize Pool
sponsored by
Competition closes: 8pm AEDT Tuesday 23rd June 2020 First Prize $15,000 Second Prize $5,000 Third Prize $1,000 2 Commended Awards: $250 each Local Award: $250 Harri Jones Memorial Prize, for a poet under 36 years: $500 HWC Members' Award: $200
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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
2019 Newcastle Poetry Prize
Dimitra Harvey, 3rd prize winner
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)
2019 Newcastle Poetry Prize judges
Judy Johnson has published six full-length poetry collections. Her poems have won the Josephine Ulrick, Val Vallis and Bruce Dawe prize,amongst others. Her collections have taken out the Victorian Premier’s Award for poetry, the Wesley Michel Wright prize (twice) and have been shortlisted in the WA and NSW Premier’s awards.
Her verse novel ‘Jack’, published by Picador, was on the syllabus at both Melbourne and Sydney University.She is one of four editors of a 25 year retrospective Contemporary Australian Poetry published by Puncher and Wattmann in 2016. She has twice beena judge of the NSW Premier’s Kenneth Slessor poetry prize, most recently in 2019.
Jaya Savige is poetry editor of The Australian newspaper. His appearance in the 2002 Newcastle Poetry Prize anthology was one of his earliest publications. His first collection, Latecomers (UQP, 2005) won the NSW Premier’s Kenneth Slessor Prize, the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott and Val Vallis Prizes, was highly commended for the Dame Mary Gilmore Prize, and was shortlisted for a number of other awards. His second collection, Surface to Air (UQP, 2011), was shortlisted for the Age Poetry Book of the Year and the West Australian Premier’s Prize for Poetry. His most recent collection is a chapbook, Maze Bright (Vagabond Rare Object Series, 2014). Jaya is a former Gates Scholar, having read for a PhD at the University of Cambridge, Christ’s College. He has held Australia Council residencies in Rome and Paris, and is a former recipient of the Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship. He is currently based in London, where he is Head of Creative Writing and Lecturer in English at the New College of the Humanities. Jaya’s next collection will be published by UQP in 2020.
2018 Newcastle Poetry Prize anthology
(if you are in the USA, purchase the anthology here)
The 2018 prizewinners 1st prize: Ross Gillett for the poem 'Buying Online' Equal 2nd prize: John Watson for the poem 'Five Replies to Miss Moore' and Mark Tredinnick for the poem 'The River Running Shallow' Harri Jones Memorial Prize for a poet under 36: Chloe Wilson for the poem 'Memory of Snails' Commended: Kevin Smith for the poem 'Thirteen Ways of Knowing My Father' Commended: Joanne Ruppin for the poem 'Time Travelling with Baby' Read what the winners have to say about their success
Ross Gillett, winner of the 2018 Newcastle Poetry Prize
Joanne Ruppin, awarded Commended in the 2018 Newcastle Poetry Prize
Kevin Smith, awarded Commended in the 2018 Newcastle Poetry Prize
