ENTRY INFORMATION

PAST WINNERS

STORY

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ENTRY INFORMATION

WINNERS

STORY

HOME

CONTACT

Welcome to the
Woorilla Poetry Prize

'Breathe-in experience, breathe-out poetry'

Muriel Rukeyser

Be part of a highly recognised poetry competition that has assisted

poets for over 30 years.

Enjoy the opportunity to have your work published in the

Woorilla Poetry Collection of Poems

Terms & Conditions

DONATE NOW

Competition Opens | 1st June 2025
Competition Closes | 30th September 2025

Awards Ceremony - Hybrid Event:
November 2025

Competition & Award Dates

$100

2nd Place

$300

1st Prize

Youth Sub - Category CALD
(For Culturally and Linguistically Diverse)

$100

2nd Place

$300

1st Prize

Louise Rockne Youth Section

$500

2nd Place

$3,000

1st Prize

Judith Rodriguez Open Section

Prizes

2024 Judges

Gayelene Carbis

Emilie Collyer

Gayelene Carbis is an Australian-Irish-Cornish-Chinese writer of poetry, prose and plays.

Her second book of poetry, I Have Decided to Remain Vertical (Puncher and Wattmann) was recently awarded Finalist in two international awards: International BestBook Awards 2023, U.S., and Poetry Book Awards 2023, U.K.

Her debut collection, Anecdotal Evidence (Five Islands Press) was awarded Finalist, International Book Awards, 2019.

Gayelene’s short fiction was recently shortlisted for the Paul Cave Prize for Literature 2023, U.K. Other awards include: First Prize in the Ros Spencer Poetry Prize and the My Brother Jack Poetry Award; Best Micro Fiction Prize; Runner-Up, Val Vallis Poetry Award; Second Prize, Newcastle Poetry Award; and Finalist, Nillumbik Prize for Contemporary Writing (Poetry). Gayelene’s short fiction and films have also won/been shortlisted for various awards in Australia and overseas, including The Age and the Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Awards.

Gayeleneis currently working on a collection of stories/auto-fiction and a new book of poetry. She teaches Creative Writing and works as a mentor and manuscript assessor.

Gayelene writes and lives on the unceded land of the Boonwurrung people.

Emilie Collyer lives on Wurundjeri land, where she writes poetry, plays and prose.

Her work mines the intersection of the personal, the existential and the socio-political and she is interested in bringing different forms into conversation with each other. Her work is published and produced internationally.

Her debut full-length poetry collection Do you have anything less domestic? (Vagabond Press 2022) won the inaugural Five Islands First Book Prize and she was runner-up in the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize 2024.

Her plays have won and been nominated for numerous awards including the Theatre503 International Playwriting Award (London), Queensland Premier’s Drama Award, Green Room Awards, and Patrick White.

2023 (and 2022) Judges

Alicia Sometimes

Kevin Brophy

Alicia Sometimes is a writer and broadcaster.

She has performed her spoken word and poetry at many venues, festivals and events around the world. She is director and co-writer of the science-poetry planetarium shows, Elemental and Particle/Wave. Her TedxUQ talk in 2019 was about combining art with science. In 2020 Alicia won the Bruce Dawe Poetry Prize.

In 2021 she completed the Boyd Garret residency for the City of Melbourne and a Virtual Writer in Residency for Manchester City of Literature and Manchester Literature Festival. She is currently a Science Gallery Melbourne ‘Leonardo’ (creative advisor).

Alicia is passionate about narrative and poetry, especially collaboration and expanding poetics into site-specific spaces.

She is always reading new work from poets and loves coming across lyrical or storytelling gems.

Twitter: @aliciasometimes

Instagram: @sometimesalicia

website: www.aliciasometimes.com

Kevin Brophy’s latest book is In This part of the World (Melbourne Poets Union 2020). His previous poetry collection, Look at the Lake (Puncher & Wattmann, 2018) was awarded the Wesley Michel Wright Prize for Poetry.

He is a past winner of the Calibre Prize for an outstanding essay. His poetry has appeared in many Best Australian Poems volumes and major national anthologies, including the recent Anthology of Australian Prose Poems (Melbourne University Press 2020) and the anthology of Australian and New Zealand poetry, The Language in My Tongue (FarFlung, 2021).

In 2015 he was writer-in-residence at the Australia Council’s B. R. Whiting Studio in Rome, and in 2019-20 at the Keesing Studio in Paris. From 1980 to 1994 he was a founding co-editor of Going Down Swinging. From 2007 until 2020 he was a managing editor at Five Islands Press.

He is patron of Melbourne Poets Union, and Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Melbourne.

In 2021 he received an Order of Australia award (AM) for his services to education and creative writing.

In additionn a new collectionn of poems, An Inventory of Longing, is due to be published by Whitmore Press in August 2024.

2021 Judges

Emilie Zoey Baker

Nathan Curnow

Emilie Zoey Baker is an award-winning Australian poet, educator, slam nerd and spoken-word performer who has toured North America, Europe and Asia as a guest of international festivals such as Montréal’s Festival Voix d’Amériques, the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival in Bali (2010, 13/14/15) and Ottawa’s VERSEfest Among many successes she is the winner of the 2010 Berlin International Literature Festival’s poetry slam Slam!

Review, a regular performer at arts and literature festivals, she has appeared at the Sydney Opera House and TEDx Melbourne as well as co-producing and appearing in events such as Elemental: Poetry at the Planetarium for Melbourne’s International Arts Festival. Emilie is co-coordinator of Liner Notes, an annual literary cabaret celebrating a classic album, during the Melbourne Writers Festival. She has toured Indonesia with the renowned Woman Of Letters storytelling series, performing in Jakarta and Jogjakarta as well as at the People Of Letters in NYC.

She has had visits in schools and universities all over the world and was the first ever Australian poet to be core Faculty at Canada’s Banff centre for the annual spoken word program.

Nathan Curnow is a poet, performer and past editor of Going Down Swinging. His work has featured widely in Australia and overseas for over twenty years, leading to a tour of Europe in 2018 where he opened the Heidelberg Literary Days Festival in Germany.

His books include The Ghost Poetry Project, RADAR, The Right Wrong Notes and The Apocalypse Awards. He has taught creative writing at Federation University and has won numerous prizes including the Josephine Ulrick Poetry Prize, the Woorilla Poetry Prize, and in 2020, the Martha Richardson Poetry Prize.

He lives in Ballarat and is honoured to continue his association with the Woorilla.

Donate to Woorilla

Woorilla Poetry Prize is a not for profit poetry competition run by volunteers who are passionate individuals, that believe in the power of poetry and supporting existing, up and coming and especially young emerging poets. Any assistance you can give will help grow and sustain this annual competition