2017 Newcastle Poetry Prize

​
Click to purchase the 2016 anthology
Entry Form



First prize: $15 000

Second prize: $5 000

Third prize: $1 000

Commended Awards:
$250
Local Award
$500
Harri Jones Memorial Prize (for a poet <35 br="" years="">$250
Hunter Writers Centre members' award
​$200

Click to enter your poem here


Judy Johnson: "It has been my pleasure and privilege to be involved with the Newcastle Poetry Prize over the years in different ways, as a judge, as a sometimes prize winner and as a poet within the pages of various anthologies. The first time I was published as a result of the competition was in 1995. I will never forget the joy and awe I felt finding my little poem surrounded by the poems of Australia’s finest poets. That feeling of wonder and gratitude has not left me, and I am thrilled at winning a prize in this important competition in 2016 and being represented in the current anthology."

John Jenkins: "Influential, as well as instructive, the NPP has helped to lift standards across the entire literary spectrum, and generally raise awareness of creative excellence in this country. The NPP emphasises the importance of locally based arts, too. As well as having a national reach, while generating work of international standard; it firmly places Newcastle as a hub of excellence. Thus, and very adroitly, the NPP helps decentralize the arts, at the same time as it fosters and re-distributes very fine work across the writing landscape."

Rod Usher: "Significant prizes such as the NPP, with its long history, are of critical value, less for the money they offer than for the way they bring poetry to public attention, and as a filter of quality. The fact that this competition can attract judges of the stature of those for this year´s prize indicates that the Newcastle is one of the nation´s most important, and that the University of Newcastle is a leader in maintaining its support for it."

​Brook Emery, winner, 1999: "It is my impression that the Newcastle Poetry Prize is still widely regarded as the most important poetry prize in Australia. I certainly think of it in this way."
Ross Gillett: The crucial thing about the Newcastle is the encouragement it gives to the writing of long poems. To my knowledge it is the only poetry prize in Australia that allows for the submission of unpublished poems longer than 100 lines. The 200 line limit allows a poet to stretch out, to explore at length the possibilities of a narrative or meditative sequence, a dramatic monologue (or dialogue for that matter) or any other exploratory poetic mode. The publication of the prize anthology offers a rare opportunity for high quality longer form poems to be published, and the recognition of the winning poems by the granting of significant monetary prizes does a lot to reinforce the professional status of poetry as an art form capable of producing sustained original work.