Blake Poetry Prize


The Blake Poetry Prize is an Australian poetry prize, which challenges Australian poets to explore the spiritual and religious in a new work of 100 lines or less presented annually by the Blake Society and the New South Wales Writers' Centre. Established in 2008, the prize offers a $5,000 prize for a new poem which best explores the religious or spiritual. The prize is non-sectarian and encourages poets to engage in the dialogue between religion, spirituality and poetry.
From 2017 the Liverpool City Library, in partnership with the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, will deliver the Blake Poetry Prize as a biennial event. They will maintain the guiding principles of the Blake Poetry Prize in continuing to engage contemporary poets, both national and international, in conversations concerning faith, spirituality, religion, hope, humanity, social justice, belief and non-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 who integrated religious and artistic content in his work. The prize challenges contemporary poets of disparate styles to explore the spiritual and religious in a new work of 100 lines or less. The 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.

Winners