‘Greater conversations about what poetry can be in Australia and the wider world’: New translated poetry prize launched

Friday, 19 September 2025 Books+Publishing

Giramondo Publishing, a small independent Australian publishing house, has partnered with London-based Fitzcarraldo Editions and New York City–based New Directions to launch the Poetry in Translation Prize, following the success of the three publishers’ Novel Prize, which began in 2020.

The Poetry in Translation Prize is a biennial award for an outstanding poetry collection translated into English. The winning entry will receive an advance of $5000, to be shared equally between poet and translator, and simultaneous publication in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, North America, and the UK and Ireland.

To contextualise this development, Books+Publishing (B+P) outlines a slice of the current poetry landscape in Australia, speaking with Nick Tapper of Giramondo Publishing.

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The earnings of Australian writers is critically below minimum wage (currently $49,296), and financial prospects for poets are known to be at the lower end, at approximately $5,700 per annum, according to Creative Australia’s 2022 research.

Those of us in the industry know that, despite this lack of monetary compensation, the power of poetry can be immeasurable. After all, how can you measure the impact of sparse words and lines shaped on a page or spoken to an audience? How can quantitative data show poetry’s power to hold and teach emotion, to share and draw experience, to connect across a country and across the seas?

Before the pandemic introduced a ‘new normal’, Giramondo Publishing shared a stand at Frankfurt with literary publishers from the US, Italy, Argentina, Spain, Finland, China and more – ‘a sign of how independents from around the world often work with a shared ethos,’ says Giramondo associate publisher Nick Tapper.

When asked about the contextual factors that led to the establishment of the inaugural Poetry in Translation Prize, Tapper leans towards this sense of something shared (but perhaps not as often recognised as such): ‘Though poetry in its outlook is often very cosmopolitan, in its reception it is often treated as quite a localised phenomenon; poets are rarely invited to writers’ festivals or given opportunities for international exposure.’

This is echoed in the words of poets such as Sarah Holland-Batt (The Jaguar, UQP, 2022) who notes that poetry ‘receives a minuscule share of literary funding, which itself receives a minuscule share of arts funding’. ‘In its heyday, major publishers had poetry lists, but now, Australian poetry is published almost entirely by small presses that struggle to survive.’

Poet and university professor Paul Hetherington (Moonlight on Oleander, UWAP, 2018) highlighted that ‘in 2025, most Australian poetry books, usually published by small presses with limited distribution, sell in the hundreds rather than the thousands’. ‘Some sell even fewer copies. Many are never reviewed.’

Industry professionals are attempting to revive mainstream appreciation for poetry and writing more generally. This is evident in initiatives such as the introduction of literary body Writing Australia and the forthcoming introduction of the Australian National Poet Laureate – a paid position promoting poetry and mentoring emerging poets, according to Australia’s current national cultural policy.

It is in this context that the new prize launches.

‘While there’s been some increased interest in translated literary fiction in recent years, we were keen to develop a more substantial international conversation around poetry,’ says Tapper. ‘And translation, especially in the intimacy of collaboration that takes place between poet and translator, seemed like the perfect form in which to do that.’

Like any good conversation, this one works both ways, too. Indeed, Tapper credits the international collaborations behind the Poetry in Translation Prize and the Novel Prize with Giramondo now seeing itself as ‘being in a relationship of kinship and dialogue with fellow literary independents in other countries – in the US and UK, but also in other languages and countries’.

Tapper notes that Giramondo approaches publishing ‘with a sense of continuity across the list’ and that ‘quality first of all’ is key to thinking long term. Tapper compares this to the curation of Giramondo’s literary magazine, HEAT, established in 1995: ‘The publishing house is not unlike HEAT – as with the articles in the magazine, there is a shared sense that each of our books is in conversation with all the others.’

Conversation seems to be a key aspect of not only poetry and translation (and the literary world generally) but also the invaluable book fairs, where many of these discussions initially take place. (Like the one you might be en route to while reading this.)

Unlike larger trade publication processes that might think ‘primarily of the next new release’, with the capacity to highlight books for only several months after publication, Giramondo assumes its ‘books and authors take time to build up readership and reputation’.

‘We have seen this bear fruit with many of our authors – that their impact and recognition can build cumulatively with awards, word of mouth and international publication,’ says Tapper.

Tapper’s recommendations of such successful books for international readers include Jessica Au’s Cold Enough for Snow (2022), which has now been published in 20 territories, following its win in the inaugural Novel Prize; Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria (2006) and her most recent novel, Praiseworthy (2023), which won the Stella Prize, the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the Queensland Literary Awards’ University of Queensland Fiction Book Award, the Voss Literary Prize and the ALS Gold Medal (and was shortlisted for even more); and Gerald Murnane’s titles, which have sold all around the world, including Border Districts (2017), Collected Short Fiction (2018) and Inland (2013).

‘Brian Castro and Antigone Kefala [after which another new poetry prize has been named] are crucial Australian authors whose work should be read far more widely,’ Tapper adds. ‘We’re really pleased to have Antigone Kefala’s work coming out in the US with Transit Books. And I’d encourage readers to discover newer writers on our list, [through] books like Raaza Jamshed’s What Kept You? (2025) and Sanya Rushdi’s Hospital (2023).’

When their joint Novel Prize was established in 2020, the three publishers hoped it ‘would promote courage and diversity about what the novel could do in the English language’ – a mission that seems to fit with the tone of Tapper’s recommendations from the publisher’s local list. Indeed, since then, the prize has seen the successful publication of Au’s Cold Enough for Snow and joint winners Jonathan Buckley’s Tell (2024) and Anne de Marcken’s It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over (2024). The most recent winner was Giada Scodellaro for Ruins, Child (March 2026), which Tapper describes as ‘an incredible novel that pushes the limits of what the novel form can do in exactly the way we hoped for when the prize was launched’.

In the context of this history of collaboration comes the new Poetry in Translation Prize, with its related aims. The inaugural winner is set to be announced in January 2026, with publication to follow in 2027.

‘There are so many extraordinary poets writing in other languages whose work is unknown in English,’ Tapper says, ‘and we’re hoping with this collaboration to spark greater conversations about what poetry can be in Australia and the wider world.’

Poetry in Australia

As Tapper implies, prizes are an important part of the landscape for Australian poetry – for both unpublished and published poets.

Major literary prize the Miles Franklin Literary Award does not accept poetry entries, but poetry works are eligible for the annual $60,000 Stella Prize for women and non-binary writers – with poets Sarah Holland-Batt and Evelyn Araluen among recent winners, with the latter the first to win the prize for a poetry collection – and for the $20,000 Patrick White Literary Award, which was last year presented to poet, publisher and editor π.ο. (Pi-O).

Many state literary awards also include prizes for poetry, including in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, the Northern Territory, South Australia, Western Australia, and the Australian Capital Territory.

In 2025, the Queensland Poetry Awards increased in value:

Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize for an Unpublished Manuscript: $2,250 in 2024 to $5,000 in 2025
Arts Queensland Val Vallis Award for an Unpublished Poem: $1,500 in 2024 to $3,500 in 2025
Oodgeroo Noonuccal Prize for Indigenous Poetry: $2,500 in 2024 to $3,500 in 2025
XYZ Prize for Spoken Word: $1,250 in 2024 to $3,500 in 2025.

A cursory glance through our own history at B+P also found the below Australian poetry competitions also several others offering monetary prizes above $1,000:

Meanwhile, the richest poetry prize in Australia is currently the biennial Helen Anne Bell Poetry Bequest Award for women poets ($40,000), most recently won by Svetlana Sterlin.

The Australian Society of Authors recommends payment between $65 and $140 for a single poem submitted to a journal and $462 for a single poem and $538–$860 for a suite of poems to be published in print anthologies. There is no data about whether publications can or are paying at these rates.

Category: Think Australian feature