Leavy wins 2026 Peter Porter Poetry Prize
Cheryl Leavy has won the 2026 Peter Porter Poetry Prize for her poem “Kumanjayi”.
Presented by the Australian Book Review (ABR) and worth $6000, the prize honours the life and work of the Australian poet Peter Porter (1929–2010), a contributor to ABR for many years.
Of “Kumanjayi”, the judges wrote: “Pulsing between speaking and silence, anger and tenderness, the poem’s spare lyricism flares into moments of repetition. These reflect trauma’s return and return, in kind, steadily to ceremony and honouring. Beginning where anger meets violence, ‘Kumanjayi’ turns to observance, tending the aftermath of violence across this ‘whole bloodied continent’.
“The poem works precisely with diction and lineation, preferring steady witness to metaphor, as though swept clear of distraction. Drawing the reader into its momentum, shifting pronouns invite witness and ask readers to consider whether, ancestrally or now, we are part of the ‘we’ who gather to heal or the ‘they’ who enact the violence, perhaps both.
“The poem’s first-person singular ‘I’ steps in only after partaking in collective mourning and healing, quietly requesting permission to address and imagine the young Kumanjayi. In the year in which there have been the most Aboriginal deaths in custody since 1979, this necessary poem moves delicately and unswervingly towards justice.”
This year’s prize was judged by Judith Bishop, Felicity Plunkett, and Anders Villani, who selected Leavy’s poem from a shortlist of 5 and longlist of 12, among 1360 entries from 32 countries. The shortlisted poems, awarded $1000 each, appeared in the January–February 2026 issue of ABR.
