Launched by the Rebecca Swift Foundation, the Women Poets' Prize is to be awarded to three female-identifying poets on a biennial basis. It aims to celebrate the empowerment of women and reward 'creatively ambitious practitioners who are making or are capable of making a significant contribution to the UK poetry landscape'. Rebecca Swift was a founder and director of The Literacy Consultancy from 1996 until her death in 2017.

Nina Mingya Powles was awarded the Prize for work of 'incredible originality that perfectly merges form and content'.

A 2015 MA in Creative Writing graduate of Victoria's IIML, Nina won that year's Biggs Family Prize for Poetry. Now living in London, she is the author of Luminescent (2017) and Girls of the Drift (2014). She is Poetry Editor of the Shanghai Review and also won the 2018 Jane Martin Poetry Prize.

The other winners were Claire Collison and Anita Pati.

Powles said she aimed to address the bias of the poetry canon towards white, European men. 'Being mixed race and half Chinese Malaysian, it has been a particular focus for me to discover other mixed race poets, writers and artists. I am trying to find a new canon of my own.'

Each winner receives £1,000 and access to a year of support and creative professional development, in collaboration with Rebecca Swift Foundation partner organisations: Faber & Faber, The Poetry School, City Lit, Verve, RADA, Bath Spa University and The Literary Consultancy. She is also paired with two mentors: one to support writing and craft, the other to advise and attend to the wider concerns of the poets' writing lives.

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