I'm thinking a Jameson Whiskey award might sit proudly on many a poet's mantle.  A bit backwards here in interior BC & having sworn off electronic drip-feed for a while, I send belated congratulations to Peter & Tony for making the Forward List.
Here in Canada the biggest monetary award for poetry books is the Griffin Prize which gives moolah to a Canadian & an international poet.  Probably familiar to you in the UK - it has recently become controversial through Scott Griffin's sponsorship & his connection to a firm manufacturing military vehicles that our nice government recently contracted to sell to the good govt of Saudi-Arabia.  Dirty money!   
In terms of prestige, that shiny button, the Governor General's award is still good for sales & author-profile raising.  GGs go to several categories of writing.  Prose does well by the Canada Reads award.  CBC sponsors this & structures it as a week of radio programs in which a panel of five 'celebrities', from any walk of life as long as they're 'hot' I guess, defend a new book (initially fiction only, now open to non-fic).  The panel votes one book off the list per day, so that by Friday the remaining dozen or so listeners... Actually they do strive to entertain, I hear, & it gives a huge sales boost.
For a story or single poem, the usual mag-subscription-for-the-cost-of-competition-entry is popular.  There is one ludicrously big monetary award ($20,000 CAD this year) for a single poem of 40 lines.  This is the Montreal International Poetry Prize.  Begun in 2011, it runs every second
year & the money comes from crowd-funding (clean money?).  I had a bash at that one this year (purely for the money:  too late for prestige!).  Judging structure seems strong.  All entries divvied randomly by computer amongst 10 editorial judges (including Michael Schmidt, Kate Clanchy, poets/critics from USA, Australia, India, Trinidad etc).  There were over 2,000 entries.  Each editor received approx 200 poems & had to choose seven.  Those 70 poems made up the long-list, which was then seen by all 10 editors who collectively whittled that down to a short-list of 50.  That bunch wax then sent to the prize judge, Eavan Boland, who selected the one winner (clearly a case here for sharing the kitty of 20 Grand a few ways).  A barmaid in Toronto won that - with a pretty lively poem from a poet with, hallelujah, little regard for literary protocol & much hunger for adventure.   She sounds like a one-woman multicultural society, Eva HD is her name on site (surname may allude to Doolittle, but abbreviates her actual full name, Eva Haralambidis-Doherty).  Risking my scarcely visible membership in the alt/inno/dunno poetry scene my quiet meditation on Caravaggio's Thomas painting made it to the shortlist.  I've apologized to myself for that & am pressing on into the vast unknown etc.  I'd read it in Cork in July & two poets I admire greatly, initials DR & RE, spoke very well of it, which along with the buzz I had on finishing it, is the real prize n'est-ce pas? (Find Eva's poem at montrealprize.com click on 2015 winner).

Cheers
Pete

Sent from my iPad

> On Oct 9, 2015, at 9:37 AM, Tony Frazer <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> I think that, if you ask the Prize organisers, you’ll find that they want to promote poetry, and are using the prize to get attention. Some writers get some money out of it, which is no bad thing, and we publishers get some attention for our books. It’s depressing that it takes a prize announcement for the press to get interested in poetry, but if that’s what it takes, well, it’s ok by me. In some bigger prizes, commercial outfits get some glitter and kudos by being associated with Literature (Costa & Man-Booker awards), plus publicity that’s worth having. In the poverty-stricken poetry world, however, a little goes a long way.
> 
> Tony
> 
> 
> 
>> On 9 Oct 2015, at 16:48, David Lace <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> 
>> So are prizes really only about this sort of thing?
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Tony Frazer wrote:
>> 
>> The way I see it, Peter and Shearsman both benefitted from the exposure and I can hardly have a problem with that.