B. R. Dionysius was founding Director of the Queensland Poetry Festival and Director of Fringe Arts Collective Inc. a not-for-profit literary collective that organised the Brisbane Writers Fringe Festival (1993-1996) the Queensland Poetry Festival (1997-2001), The Arts Queensland Award for Unpublished Poetry (now the Val Vallis Award for Unpublished Poetry) published the poetry broadsheet, Seriously Fishy, and ran literary events in Brisbane including Chalice Poets, With Baited Breath and The Word Made Flesh. He has an M.Phil. (Creative Writing) from The University of Queensland and has taught English at Ipswich Grammar School.
Among his publications are artist's books (The Barflies' Chorus, 1995), multiple collections of poetry (including Fatherlands, 2000; Bacchanalia, 2002; and Weranga, 2013), a verse novel (Universal Andalusia (2006), and poetry chapbooks (including The Negativity Bin, 2010, and The Curious Noise of History, 2011.
Fatherlands was shortlisted in the 2002 Mary Gilmore Award, Bacchanalia won the inaugural IP Picks 2002 Poetry Award, Universal Andalusia was shortlisted in the 2006 C. J. Dennis Poetry Prize, and Bowra was the joint winner of the 2011 Whitmore Press Manuscript Prize. His individual works have also attracted a range of shortlisting and wins, both nationally and internationally.
With poets Liz Hall-Downs and Sam Wagan Watson he wrote a sequence of poems, Boondall Cycle for the Black Fellas White Fellas Wetlands: Boondall Wetlands Website project (1996-1999, Brisbane Stories, Brisbane City Council). An audio CD of the poetry from the Black Fellas, White Fellas Wetlands project was released in 2000. In 1999, he was awarded a New Work Grant from the Literature Fund of the Australia Council to write the verse novel, Universal Andalusia. He was a general poetry editor for Papertiger: New World Poetry CDROM from 2000-2006. Papertigermedia won the Queensland Writers' Centre's Johnno Award in 2002. He was awarded the 1998 Harri Jones Memorial Prize, the 2009 Max Harris Poetry Award, and the 2016 Paul Sherman Community Poetry Award.
