Five Islands Prize: For a first book of poetry

Emilie Collyer and Vagabond Press for Do You Have Anything Less Domestic?

The Five Islands Press Prize aims to support and celebrate emerging poets, and honour publishers of new poetry.

This is an annual prize for a first already-published book-length collection of poetry by an Australian poet or a poet living and writing in Australia

The author of the prize-winning book will receive $2750 and the publisher will receive $1100.

Advisory Board

Professor Dan Disney

Sogang University, Seoul, South Korea

Dr Jennifer Harrison

Dax Poetry Collection Manager and Psychiatry Fellow, University of Melbourne

Dr Nadia Niaz

Founder and Editor Australian Multilingual Writing Project and Creative Writing Program, School of Culture and Communication, The University of Melbourne

Distinguished Professor Jen Webb

Administration

Emeritus Professor Kevin Brophy AM
Katie Hayne, University of Canberra
Libby Austen, Technology, design and admin assistant

Partners

University of Canberra  
Website host and administration support

Australian Poetry
Communications Partner

2022–2023 Judges

Angela Costi

Angela is the author of five poetry collections: Dinted Halos, Prayers for the Wicked, Honey & Salt (shortlisted for the Mary Gilmore Poetry Prize 2008), Lost in Mid-Verse and An Embroidery of Old Maps and New. In 1995, she received a travel award from the Australia National Languages and Literacy Board to study Ancient Greek Drama in Greece. The Relocated arts project, for which she was writer-in-residence at the former Kensington Public Housing Estate, received the national award for community innovation, 2002. In 2009, she travelled to Japan with support from the Australia Council for the Arts as part of an international collaboration to perform her poetic text A Nest of Cinnamon. In 2021, City of Melbourne funding is supporting her to work on a new suite of poetry titled The Heart of the Advocate. She is also known as Aggeliki Kosti among the Cypriot-Greek diaspora (her heritage).

Nicholas Powell

Nicholas is an Australian poet and the author of Water Mirrors (UQP), winner of the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Prize, and shortlisted for the Wesley Michel Wright Poetry Prize. A new collection, Trap Landscape, is forthcoming. He was a recipient of a Young Australian Poets Fellowship, and his poems have been published in Southerly, Overland, Cordite, The Weekend Australian Review, Rabbit, The Age, as well as in the anthology, Ashbery Mode (2019). He has appeared on panels and in performances at various festivals and has had work commissioned by arts organizations. He is currently based in Finland.

Amanda Anastasi

Amanda Anastasi is the convener of La Mama Poetica and author of The Inheritors (Black Pepper, 2021). Her work has been featured in Australian Poetry Journal, Griffith Review, The Massachusetts Review and Best Australian Science Writing 2021 and 2022. Amanda is a two-time recipient of the Ada Cambridge Poetry Prize and was awarded a Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowship to write a series of poems set in the year 2042. In 2020, she was a digital Artist in Residence with Assembly of the Future’s The Things We Did Next, exploring imagined futures through poetry. Amanda has been Poet in Residence at the Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub from 2019-2022, writing poetry in response to the climate crisis. She recently returned from a Nielma Sidney Literary Travel Grant to write at the Great Barrier Reef.

Step 1

Post four (4) copies of the submitted poetry book to:

Five Islands Prize
PO Box 68
Brunswick Victoria 3056

Posted books should be received on or before 15 July 2024.

Step 2

Email Kevin Brophy at: kevinjb@unimelb.edu.au (Subject: FIVE ISLANDS PRIZE ENTRY) attesting that this is the poet’s first published book of poetry, and provide contact details for the poet and the publisher.

Terms & Conditions

• This is an annual prize for a first already-published book-length collection of poetry by an Australian poet or a poet living and writing in Australia.
• The author of the prize-winning book will receive $2750 and the publisher will receive $1100.
• A book can be entered by the author or publisher.
• The book must contain at least thirty pages of poetry, have an ISBN, and be available through retail sales outlets.
• Self-published books are eligible as long as they meet the above criteria.
• For the 2023-2024 Prize, books published between 1 July 2023 and 30 June 2024 are eligible.
• Note: the prize aims to support professional publishers, in particular small-press, independent publishers.
• Submissions will open all year until 15 July 2024.
• There will be three judges, whose decision will be final.
• The Prize will be announced in late November, and presented shortly afterwards.
• Four copies of the submitted book are to be posted to PO Box 68 Brunswick Victoria 3056.
• Books submitted will not be returned.
• An email must be sent to Kevin Brophy at: kevinjb@unimelb.edu.au attesting that this is the poet’s first published book of poetry, and providing the book's publishing date, and contact details for the poet and the publisher.