The Newcastle Poetry Prize, one of the country's most prestigious and important awards, is always a challenge for the judges. There were 590 entries in this year's prize. Of these, sixty poems or roughly ten percent we considered as contenders. After further discussion, we settled on a list of thirty-six poems for the anthology. These were poems that had something to say about our times, impressed us with their technique, surprised us with their language, moved us, made us laugh, and astounded us with their intellectual depth.
In creating poetry, you need to surrender to the poem, that is, to let it open a spaciousness inside you. When you surrender to the poem it means that the poem can take a turn anywhere, it can border on the unexpected and the unknown. The poems we have selected for the anthology we believe have achieved this level of success.


Mike Ladd & Judith Beveridge
Judges 2020 Newcastle Poetry Prize