Jaya Savige is a Sydney-born poet, writer, editor and critic currently living in London. He is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Change Machine (2020), which was a Book of the Year for the Sydney Morning Herald/The Age, Australian Book Review, Weekend Australian and ABC Radio National’s Bookshelf, & was shortlisted for the 2021 Australian Prime Minister’s Award for Poetry, the NSW Premier’s Kenneth Slessor Prize, the QLA Judith Wright Calanthe Prize and the Queensland Premier’s Award for a work of State Significance. His essays and reviews have appeared throughout Australia and abroad in the Times Literary Supplement, London Magazine, Poetry (Chicago) and elsewhere. Jaya is the long-standing poetry editor for The Australian newspaper (2010-), for which he has selected over 500 poems.
Jaya is represented in the UK by Peter Straus @ RCW Literary Agency.
Born to an Indonesian father and an Anglo-Celtic Australian mother, I grew up on Bribie Island / Yarun in Moreton Bay, and in Brisbane / Meanjin, Queensland. After quitting Law at university I was awarded the University Medal for a first-class BA in English and Philosophy, and gained an MPhil in Creative Writing from the University of Queensland. I received a Gates Cambridge Scholarship to read for a PhD in English at Christ’s College, University of Cambridge. From 2013-2021 I was Assistant Professor of English and Head of Creative Writing at Northeastern University, London (formerly New College of the Humanities). I recently wrote the final two chapters of the Cambridge History of Australian Poetry, ed. by Ann Vickery and Philip Mead (2025).
My first poetry collection, latecomers (UQP 2005), won the NSW Premier’s Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry and the Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize, was Highly Commended for the Dame Mary Gilmore Prize and shortlisted for several other awards. Surface to Air (UQP 2011), was shortlisted for The Age Poetry Book of the Year and the West Australian Premier’s Prize.
Poems of mine can be found on this website, in the books promoted here, and in The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry, Poetry International, Contemporary Australian Poetry, Thirty Australian Poets, in more than ten editions of the annual Best Australian Poems, and in magazines and journals such as Poetry Review, London Magazine and PN Review (UK), Kenyon Review, Jacket2, POETRY (Chicago) and Poetry Daily (USA), Poesia (Italy) and throughout Australia in Cordite Review, Marrickville Pause, Meanjin, Overland, Rabbit, Southerly, Stilts and more.
I have given given readings at festivals and events in Bali, Berlin, Brisbane, Cambridge, Düsseldorf, London, Melbourne, Milan, New York, Prague, Turin, Sydney, Verona and elsewhere. I’ve been a recipient of a Marten Bequest Traveling Scholarship for Poetry, a Brisbane Lord Mayor’s Artist Fellowship, and Australia Council (Creative Australia) writing residencies at the B.R. Whiting Library Studio, Rome, and the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris.