Australian poet Emma Jones has won Best First Collection at Britain's prestigious Forward Prizes for Poetry.

The 32-year-old from Sydney became the first Australian to win the STG5,000 ($A8,935) Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection with her debut, The Striped World, on Wednesday night UK time at a ceremony held at Somerset House, London - on the eve of Britain's National Poetry Day. The prizes were founded by Forward Arts Foundation chairman William Sieghart in 1992 to raise the profile of contemporary poetry.

Chair of judges Josephine Hart described Jones as "an ambitious and intriguing new voice".
"Emma Jones' poems in The Striped World are both elliptical and visionary - inhabiting a parallel world of strange disjointed images within which we nevertheless find echoes of familiar experience," Hart said.
Jones (who was also awarded the Queensland Premier's Literary Award for Poetry in September 2009) holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Sydney and a PhD in English from the University of Cambridge. In May, she took up a one-year post as poet-in-residence for the Wordsworth Trust in Grasmere, England. Scottish poet Don Paterson, who won Best First Collection in 1993, took out this year's Forward Prize for Best Collection with Rain. The winners were announced at a ceremony in Somerset House, London, on the eve of Britain's National Poetry Day.
Matthew Hollis, the poetry publisher at Faber & Faber, said: "Emma is a poet of originality and daring, a thrilling new talent who deserves to find readers. We couldn't be more delighted for her, or more excited about the contribution she is making to poetry in Britain, Australia and everywhere her words carry."
The Striped World by Emma Jones, published by Faber & Faber,

distributed in Australia and New Zealand by Allen & Unwin.