A cornerstone of the Australian federal government’s 2023 National Cultural Policy, Revive: A Place for Every Story and a Story for Every Place – the first formal federal arts policy in Australia in more than a decade – has been the establishment of the office of a national poet laureate, whose objectives according to legislation are twofold: to “promote poetry,” and to “mentor up and coming poets” (Commonwealth of Australia, 2023, p. 69). Across international iterations of poet laureateships, there is a common understanding of the role as a means by which national acknowledgment can be made of an individual’s distinguished contributions over time, and that the individual poet will champion the cause of poetry. The role of mentorship for a poet laureate is less clear. This paper explores the Australian National Cultural Policy’s novel framing of the poet laureate role as a form of mentorship by offering a comparative analysis of international laureateship models within the context of current mentorship theory and practice to consider how it might frame or expand notions of mentorship.
Holland‐Batt et al. (Wed,) studied this question.