Caselberg Trust International Poetry Prize 2026 - winners announced

By Caselberg Trust | Posted: Thursday Sep 24, 2026

The competition is now in its sixteenth year, and this year attracted 192 poems from New Zealand, Australia, Germany, India, Iran, Iraq, UK, USA, and Venezuela. This year’s competition was judged by writer Emma Neale.

The winner receives a cash prize of $600, a one week stay at the Caselberg house in 2027, and their poem published in Landfall Tauraka 252 in November 2026. The two runner up poets receive a cash prize of $300.

Winner:

Linda Collins, Rambling, Oamaru

Runner up:

• Margaret Moores, Self-portrait: Still life 1973, Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland

• Michelle Elvy, Will, Ōtepoti/Dunedin

Highly Commended:

• Janet Newman, Farmer Digs, Taitoko/Levin

• Jessica Hinerangi Thompson Carr, Sycorax, Ōtepoti/Dunedin

• Bee Trudgeon, Score, Porirua

• Jodie Dalgleish, Beauty, Whanganui

Commended:

• Wes Lee, Persephone and time in the Underworld, Te Whanganui a Tara/Wellington

• Kunal Sharma, The attendance of ash, Delhi

• Lee Fraser, Fear (Swadesh), Ōtautahi/Christchurch

• Susan Wardell, Hare or Fear, Ōtepoti/Dunedin

• Sarah Scott, Radiata, Te Whanganui a Tara/Wellington

• John Kelk, Tuwhare, Muruhiku/Invercargill

The winning poem and Emma’s judge’s report will be published in November in Landfall Tauraka 252 – Spring 2026, and subsequently on our Caselberg Trust website along with the runner up, Highly Commended, and Commended poems.

In her judge’s report Dr Neale noted that ‘The 192 entries this year sent me off on a long and taxing quest. For extended reading stints, it seemed I was hunting for, say, a lost pounamu ring on a vast beach covered with stones glowing or glowering in every shade of green’.

Of the winning poem Rambling by Linda Collins she said ‘‘Rambling’ has fluent syntax and although dotted with contemporary language, it reveals a traditional notion of the poem. It’s tightly structured in ‘unheroic’ couplets; it’s bucolic in the sense that it celebrates a natural idyll, and the closure has the satisfying elan of a riddle arriving in almost the same instant that it’s resolved’

The Caselberg Trust would like to thank sponsors The University Bookshop (UBS) and Dunedin UNESCO City of Literature for supporting the Caselberg Trust International Poetry Prize, and for supporting poetry in Aotearoa New Zealand.

We also thank Landfall Tauraka for their ongoing support.

Contact for further information: Robert West – email: info@caselbergtrust.org