University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize

About the Prize

The University of Canberra has established an international poetry prize. On behalf of the University, this is administered by the International Poetry Studies Institute (IPSI) - http://ipsi.org.au/, part of the Centre for Creative and Cultural Research - http://www.canberra.edu.au/research/faculty-research-centres/cccr in the Faculty of Arts and Design.

The prize celebrates the enduring significance of poetry to cultures everywhere in the world and its ongoing and often seminal importance to world literature. It marks the University of Canberra's commitment to creativity and imagination in all that it does and builds on the work of the International Poetry Studies Institute in identifying poetry as a highly resilient and sophisticated human activity. It also builds on the activities of the Centre for Creative and Cultural Research, which conducts wide-ranging research into human creativity and culture.

The University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor's International Poetry Prize was offered for the first time in 2014. The 2016 prize will be announced on or before 30 September 2016 and prize winners and short-list will be notified prior to that.

2016 Judges

Simon Armitage will be head judge for the 2016 Vice-Chancellor's International Poetry Prize.

Simon Armitage lives in West Yorkshire and is a Professor of Poetry at the University of Sheffield. He has published over a dozen collections of poetry including Paper Aeroplane - Selected Poems 1989 to 2014 and his acclaimed translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.  His three best-selling non-fiction titles are All Points North, Walking Home, and Walking Away.  Armitage writes extensively for radio and television, and his most recent play was The Last Days of Troy, performed at Shakespeare's Globe in London.  In 2015 he was appointed Professor of Poetry at Oxford University.

Longlist judges

Merlinda Bobis, a Filipino-Australian, is the author of three novels, five poetry books, seven dramatic works (stage and radio), a collection of short stories, and a monograph on writing and researching fiction. Her literary works have received various awards, among them the Prix Italia, the Steele Rudd Award for the Best Published Collection of Australian Short Stories, the Philippine National Book Award, the Philippine Balagtas Award, the Australian Writers' Guild Award, the Ian Reed Radio Drama Prize, and were shortlisted for the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal and The Age Poetry Book Award.

Michelle Cahill is the author of The Accidental Cage, Vishvarūpa, and Night Birds. She has received prizes in poetry and in fiction. She was a fellow at Kingston University, London. In 2016 she is a Visiting Scholar in Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. She co-edited Contemporary Asian Australian Poets with Kim Cheng Boey and Adam Aitken, and she edits Mascara Literary Review. She has written essays on poetics, race, and cultural diversity for Southerly, Westerly, and the Sydney Review of Books.

Jack Ross works as a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Massey University's Auckland Campus. His latest book A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems and Sequences 1981-2014, appeared in 2014 from HeadworX (Wellington). His other publications include four full-length poetry collections, three novels, and three volumes of short fiction. He has also edited a number of books and literary magazines, including (from 2014) Poetry New Zealand. Details of these and other publications are available on his blog The Imaginary Museum http://mairangibay.blogspot.com/.

This opportunity has expired. It was originally published here:

http://www.canberra.edu.au/about-uc/competitions-and-awards/vcpoetryprize