The Blake Poetry Prize 2021

The Blake Poetry Prize challenges Australian poets to explore the spiritual and religious in a new work of 100 lines or less.

From 2017  Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre in collaboration with WestWords,  has delivered The Blake Poetry Prize as a biennial event.

The Blake Prize is an open poetry prize that challenges poets, both national and international, in conversations concerning faith, spirituality, religion and/or belief.

The Blake Poetry Prize is an aesthetic means of exploring the wider experience of spirituality with the visionary imagining of contemporary poets. The Blake Prize takes its name from William Blake, a poet and artist of undoubted genius, who integrated religious and artistic content in his work. The Blake Poetry Prize challenges contemporary poets of disparate styles to explore the spiritual and religious in a new work of 100 lines or less.

The Blake Poetry Prize is strictly non-sectarian. The entries are not restricted to works related to any faith or any artistic style, but all poems entered must have a recognisable religious or spiritual integrity and demonstrate high degrees of artistic and conceptual proficiency.

The Blake Poetry Prize | $5,000 | Non-Acquisitive

Key dates

Entries open: 9 August 2021
Entries close: 15 November 2021
Shortlist announcement: Friday 4th February, 2022
Launch & Winners Announcement: Saturday 12th March 2022

Entry fee: $30

If you have any questions please email us: admin@westwords.com.au 
See below for terms and conditions of entry
To ENTER please click here

The 2021 judges:

Judith Nangala Crispin
Judith is a poet and visual artist of Bpangerang descent, and is currently poetry editor of The Canberra Times. Judith is also the author of two additional published collections of poems, The Myrrh-Bearers (Puncher & Wattmann, 2015), and The Lumen Seed (Daylight Books, 2017). She was the winner of the 2020 Blake Poetry Prize. To hear an interview with Judith and the 2021 highly commended poet, Louise Carter, please click here.

 

Anthony Lawrence
Anthony  has published seventeen books of poems and a novel. His most recent collection is Ken (Life Before Man, 2021). His books and individual poems have won many awards, including The Blake Poetry Prize, The Prime Ministers Literary Award for Poetry, The Kenneth Slessor Poetry Award and the Judith Wright Calanthe Award. He is a Senior Lecturer at Griffith University, where he teaches Creative Writing.

 

Juan Garrido-Salgado
Juan Garrido-Salgado immigrated to Australia from Chile in 1990, fleeing the regime that burned his poetry and imprisoned and tortured him for his political activism. He has published eight books of poetry and his work has been widely translated. He has also translated works by a number of leading Australian & Aboriginal poets into Spanish, including five Aboriginal poets for the anthology Espejo de Tierra/ Earth Mirror (2008). With Steve Brock and Sergio Holas, Garrido-Salgado also translated into English the Trilingual Mapuche Poetry Anthology. The book When I was Clandestine was part of a poetical tour at the Granada International Poetry Festival in Nicaragua, Mexico and Cuba (La Habana City) in 2019. Hope Blossoming in Their Ink ( Puncher & Wattman) in 2020. Three of his poems were published at Saturdaypaper.com May 21.

 

To listen to the full shortlisted poems from the 2020 competition , read by the poets, click here

To ENTER please click here

Terms and Conditions

  • The following persons, and their immediate family members, are ineligible to enter:
    • Competition judges;
    • Current Liverpool City Councillors and current Liverpool City Council employees (including casuals); and
    • Directors and staff of WestWords.
  • All entries must demonstrate recognisable engagement with the themes of:
    • Spirituality;
    • Religion; and/or
    • Belief.
  • All entries must have been created no earlier than two years before 9 August 2021 (entry open date).
  • Entry Forms must be completed and submitted by 5:00pm on 15 November 2021 (entry closure date).
  • Late or incomplete entry forms will not be accepted.
  • An entry is deemed to be incomplete and ineligible if the entry fee has not been paid.
  • Eligible entries must:
    • have only one author;
    • not be longlisted for any other literary prize;
    • be between one and a hundred lines in length (not including the title but including footnotes and subheadings);
    • be in either PDF or Word format; and
    • not include any identifying information (including the name, pseudonym, nor contact details of the author).
  • Entrants may enter a maximum of five poems.
  • The author warrants that the submitted poem is original and does not infringe on the copyright, moral rights, or other rights of any other person.
  • Casula Powerhouse Art Centre (CPAC) and WestWords reserve the right to request a Statutory Declaration from any author regarding the works originality, its production within the specified timeframe and/or that it does not in any way infringe upon the rights of any other person as detailed above.
  • Entries may have been published elsewhere, including in a literary journal, online, or in a self-published book or collection.
  • If an entry to the Prize becomes longlisted for a prize elsewhere, the entrant must notify WestWords in writing (admin@westwords.com.au) that entry has been longlisted for another prize. Following, the entrant will have twenty-four (24) hours to decide whether they will:
    • Withdraw their entry from the Prize by notifying WestWords in writing; or
    • Withdraw their entry from the other prize.
  • In the event that the entrant fails to notify WestWords, or that the entry is longlisted in another prize and is not withdrawn within 24 hours, the entry will be disqualified for consideration for the Prize.
  • Eligible entries using or referring to Aboriginal content and/or entries from writers of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent or who identify as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander must be in accordance with the Indigenous Peoples’ rights to their heritage (ICIPR) guidelines and to the Aboriginal protocols of the region where they have been produced (https://www.artslaw.com.au/informationsheet/indigenous-cultural-and-intellectual-property-icip-aitb/ ).
  • By submitting an entry into the Prize, the entrant grants permission for WestWords and/or CPAC and/or Liverpool City Council to print and display the entries all shortlisted entries, in full or in part, online or as part of the Blake Prize Exhibition, 12 March 2022 – 22 May 2022.

The Blake Poetry Prize is presented in partnership with