Caselberg International Poetry Prize

By Caselberg Trust | Posted: Wednesday May 14, 2025

Competition opens Sunday 1 June and closes on Monday 30 June 2025

Original Article: Prizes — Caselberg Trust

The Caselberg Trust will soon be calling for entries for the 2025 Caselberg Trust International Poetry Competition. Now in its 15th year, the Trust is delighted to announce that Dunedin’s finest book shop – the University Book Shop is supporting the poetry prize again this year, and will also host the awards night to coincide with the publication of Landfall 250 Spring 2025.

Entries are judged blind. First Prize is $600 (plus one-week stay at the Caselberg house at Broad Bay, Dunedin). Second Prize is $300; and there are up to 5 Highly-Commended awards (no monetary prizes).

The first- and second-placed poems will be published in the November issue of Landfall, and all winning and highly-commended entries will appear on the Caselberg Trust website (copyright remaining with the authors).

This year’s Judge is Robert Sullivan

Robert (Ngāpuhi, Kāi Tahu, Irish) is the author and editor of fifteen books—mainly poetry, as well as a graphic novel Maui Legends of the Outcast illustrated by Chris Slane and Weaving Earth and Sky, a New Zealand Post Children's Book of the Year, which was illustrated by Gavin Bishop. He co-edited, with Albert Wendt and Reina Whaitiri, the anthologies of Polynesian poetry in English, Whetu Moana and Mauri Ola, and an anthology of Māori poetry with Reina Whaitiri, Puna Wai Kōrero. He co-edited with Janet Newman Koe: An Aotearoa ecopoetry anthology (Otago University Press, 2024).

He co-edits The Journal of New Zealand Literature with Dr Erin Mercer, is President of the NZ Poetry Society, and has served on many literature advisory and judging panels. His most recent book is Hopurangi / Songcatcher published by AUP in 2024 which is shortlisted for the Ockham NZ Book Awards 2025 Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry. His most recent work is published in Landfall248, and forthcoming in issue 7 of Peripheries(Harvard University Press) guest-edited by Jessica Wilkinson.