Caselberg International Poetry Prize

The Caselberg Trust will soon be calling for entries for the 2024 Caselberg Trust International Poetry Competition. Now in its 14th 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 our awards night to coincide with the publication of Landfall 248 Spring 2024. Thank you to everyone at the University Book Shop for your ongoing support.

The competition opens Saturday 1 June and closes on Wednesday 31 July 2024. Entries are judged blind. First Prize is $500 (plus one-week stay at the Caselberg house at Broad Bay, Dunedin). Second Prize is $250; 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).

Alan Roddick. Photo: Jill Milne

This year’s Judge is Alan Roddick

Alan Roddick is the author of three collections of poems since 1967, the most recent being Next, Poems 2016-2021 (Otago University Press). One of the poems in that book was included in Best New Zealand Poems 2022.

With the Wellington novelist Natasha Templeton he made a new translation, from the original Russian, of Aleksandr Blok’s final masterpiece The Twelve (Cold Hub Press, 2021).

As Charles Brasch’s literary executor Alan has published three collections of Brasch’s poetry, most recently the Brasch Selected Poems (Otago University Press, 2016).

He has written extensively on the work of Allen Curnow, including his monograph Allen Curnow (Oxford University Press, 1984), and an extended essay on Curnow’s late poetry, Dead on Time: ‘A Reliable Service’, published in the Journal of New Zealand Literature in 1997. Among other ‘literary odd-jobs’, he has also been the editor and presenter of the monthly nationwide radio programme ‘Poetry’ for four years. 

A retired public health dentist, Alan lived for some years at Broad Bay on the Otago Peninsula, where he was a founding member of the Caselberg Trust. He and his wife now live in Dunedin.

Entry information

  • Submissions open on 1 June and close on 31 July 2024 5pm NZT.

  • Up to two poems from any one entrant will be accepted.

  • Poems must be the original work of the entrant, previously unpublished, and not submitted elsewhere.

  • Poems must be no more than 40 lines in length.

  • Entries must be typewritten, and each poem should be laid out on a word document and submitted using the online submission form. Any style or subject will be considered.

  • The poet’s name must not appear on the typescript.

Submission and entry fee

  • Entries can only be accepted via the online form.

  • Entry fee:  $20NZD for up to two poems.

  • Entry fees should be paid at the time of submission of your entry, using the unique code generated by the online form as a reference.

  • Where payments are not received by 5pm 31 July, poems will not be submitted for judging.

Correspondance

No entries received after Friday 31 July 2024 will be considered and due to the volume of entries we can not accept amendments or enter into correspondance about submissions.

Winners only will be notified of their success.

A copy of the Judge’s report will be posted on our website, and as always, the Judge’s decisions will be final, and no correspondence will be entered into.