We're delighted to announce that Imperium by Jay Gao has won the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize! The news was announced on 5th October 2023, to coincide with National Poetry Day.

The biennial prize is awarded to a distinctive first collection of poetry published between 1 January 2019 and 31 December 2022. The prize was established by colleagues at Nottingham Trent University in honour of Liverpool-born poet Michael Murphy, who sadly passed away in 2009. Michael was awarded the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize for 'New Poet of the Year' in 2001, so this prize aims to extend the same recognition to another new poet.

Congratulations Jay!

By reimagining episodes from Homer's Odyssey, Jay Gao's highly anticipated debut collection, Imperium, introduces an innovative talent whose work cuts across poetic traditions, traversing mythic cartographies and imperial formations. Exploring forms of absolute and intimate power, Imperium is an imaginative meditation on how the past lives on in the present by way of, and beyond, a global poetics of diaspora.