"[t]he glory of present-day English writing in America, in Australia and in Britain, is what is left over of the old regular metrical pattern and how that can be adapted to the new sense that the main element, the main fixture of poetry is no longer the foot (you know, the iambus or the trochee) but the cadence. It seems that what is very important is to get the best of the old authority, the best of the old discipline along with the best of the new freedom of expression."

• 1983 Duff Cooper Memorial Prize for his first Collected Poems
• 1988 Whitbread Poetry Award for Automatic Oracle
• 1990 Australian Literature Society Gold Medal for Possible Worlds
• 1997 Age Book of the Year Poetry Prize Co-winner for Dragons in their Pleasant Places
• 1998 The First King's Lynn Award for Merit in Poetry
• 2000 Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal at the Mildura Writer's Festival
• 2002 Forward Poetry Prize for Max Is Missing
• 2002 Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry
• 2004 Medal of the Order of Australia
• 2004 Honorary Fellow of the English Association, UK
• 2007 Royal Society of Literature Companion of Literature
• 2009 Honorary Doctorate, Nottingham Trent University
• 2009 Age Book of the Year Poetry Prize for Better Than God

Individual collections

• Once Bitten Twice Bitten, Scorpion Press, 1961.
• Poems Ancient and Modern, Scorpion Press, 1964.
• A Porter Folio, Scorpion Press, 1969.
• The Last of England, Oxford University Press, 1970.
• After Martial, Oxford University Press, 1972.
• Preaching to the Converted, Oxford University Press, 1972.
• Jonah, with Arthur Boyd Secker & Warburg, 1973.
• Living in a Calm Country, Oxford University Press, 1975.
• The Lady and the Unicorn, with Arthur Boyd Secker & Warburg, 1975.
• The Cost of Seriousness, Oxford University Press, 1978.
• English Subtitles, Oxford University Press, 1981.
• Fast Forward (poetry book)|Fast Forward, Oxford University Press, 1984.
• Narcissus with Arthur Boyd, Seckers & Warburg, London, 1984.
• The Automatic Oracle, Oxford University Press, 1987.
• Mars, with Arthur Boyd Deutsch, 1988.
• Possible Worlds, Oxford University Press, 1989.
• The Chair of Babel, Oxford University Press, 1992.
• Millennial Fables, Oxford University Press, 1994.
• Dragons in Their Pleasant Palaces, Oxford University Press, 1997.
• Both Ends Against the Middle, 1999 as a section in Collected Poems Volume 2.
• Max Is Missing, Picador/Macmillan, 2001.
• Afterburner, Picador/Macmillan, 2004.
• Better Than God, Picador, 2009

Chapbooks

• Solemn Adultery at Breakfast Creek The Keepsake Press, London, 1968 (200 copies)
• The Animal Programme: Four Poems Anvil Press Poetry Ltd, London, 1982 (250 copies). ISBN 0856461075.
• A King's Lynn Suite, King's Lynn Poetry Festival, 1999.
• Return to Kerguelen, Vagabond Press, London, 2001.

Broadsheets

• Words Without Music, Sycamore Press, 1968.
• Epigrams by Martial, Poem-of-the-Month Club, 1971.

Translations

• After Martial Oxford University Press, 1972.
• from the Greek Anthology in Penguin Classics edition
• Michelangelo, Life, Letters, and Poetry, with George Bull Oxford University Press, 1987.
• Liu Hongbin, A Day Within Days, with the author. Ambit Books, London 2006

Selected and collected

• Collected Poems, Oxford University Press, 1983.
• A Porter Selected: Poems 1959–1989. Oxford University Press, 1989.
• Collected Poems. 2 vols. Oxford & Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Essays

• Saving from the Wreck: Essays on Poetry. Trent, 2001.

Appearance in collections and anthologies

• Penguin Modern Poets, No. 2 (Kingsley Amis, Dom Moraes, Peter Porter). Penguin, 1962.
• British Poetry since 1945 (ed. Edward Lucie-Smith), Penguin, 1970
• 'Rivers: A Poem Sequence' in Rivers (Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2002) which also included poetry by Sean O'Brien and John Kinsella

Books edited

• A Choice of Pope's Verse Faber & Faber, 1971.
• New Poems, 1971–1972: A P. E. N. Anthology of Contemporary Poetry Hutchinson, 1972.
• The English Poets: From Chaucer to Edward Thomas, with Anthony Thwaite Secker & Warburg, 1974.
• New Poetry I, with Charles Osborne, Arts Council of Great Britain, 1975.
• Thomas Hardy, selected, with photographs by John Hedgecoe. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1981.
• The Faber Book of Modern Verse 4th edition, originally edited by Michael Roberts Faber & Faber, 1982.
• William Blake, selected , Oxford University Press, 1986
• Christina Rossetti, selected, Oxford University Press, 1986
• William Shakespeare, with an introduction, C.N. Potter, 1987, Aurum, 1988.
• Complete Poems, by Martin Bell, Bloodaxe, 1988.
• John Donne, edited, Aurum, 1988.
• The Fate of Vultures: New Poetry of Africa, with Kofi Anyidoho, and Musaemura Zimunya. Heinemann International, 1989.
• Lord Byron, Aurum, 1989
• W. B. Yeats: The Last Romantic, Aurum, 1990.
• Percy Bysshe Shelley, selected, Aurum, 1991.
• Elizabeth Barrett Browning, selected, Aurum, 1992.
• Robert Burns, selected, Aurum, 1992.
• The Romantic Poets: Byron, Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, selected, Aurum, 1992.
• Robert Browning, selected, Aurum, 1993.
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge, selected Aurum, 1994.
• The Oxford Book of Australian Verse Oxford University Press, 1996.
• Selected Poems of Lawrence Durrell Faber and Faber, 2006.

Scores and libretti

• Annotations of Auschwitz, with music by David Lumsdaine Universal Edition, 1975.
• Orpheus: A Chamber Opera in One Act, music by Geoffrey Burgon Chester Music, 1985.
• The Voice of Love, words for a song cycle, music by Nicholas Maw.
• St Francis and the Wolf, an opera for children, music by Ronald Senator