Prize for Poetry (2011-)
The C.J. Dennis Prize for Poetry (1985-2010)
Subcategory of Victorian Premier's Literary Awards
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Latest Winners / Recipients

Year: 2024

winner y separately published work icon Chinese Fish Grace Yee , Artarmon : Giramondo Publishing , 2023 26023166 2023 single work novel

'A family saga narrated in multiple voices and laced with archival fragments and scholarly interjections, Chinese Fish offers an intimate glimpse into the lives of women and girls in a community that has historically been characterised as both a ‘yellow peril’ menace and an exotic ‘model minority’.'(Publication summary)

Year: 2023

winner y separately published work icon At the Altar of Touch Gavin Yuan Gao , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2022 23428662 2022 selected work poetry

'From the 2020 winner of the Thomas Shapcott Award comes a sophisticated, impressive and rich collection of poetry that unpacks the complexity of family, grief, and cross-cultural and queer identity.

'These richly allusive poems weigh violence and tenderness, wound and cure, history and future. Boldly and tenderly, they balance loss and gain, adventure and quiet, as they hum to one another of love and loss. This is a scintillating and exhilarating collection from an accomplished and distinctive new voice.' (Publication summary)

Year: 2022

winner y separately published work icon Trigger Warning Maria Takolander , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2021 19702968 2021 selected work poetry

'Trigger Warning is not for the fainthearted, but neither are the elemental realities of domestic violence and environmental catastrophe that these astonishing poems address. Comprised of three sections, the first summons a difficult personal history by conversing with poets – from Sylvia Plath to Anne Carson – whose dramatised confessions trigger Takolander’s own. The second part remains focused on the domestic, while redeeming that scene of trauma through a reinventing wit. The final section of this extraordinary book turns its attention outside, playing with poetry itself in order to confront the Anthropocene and the final frontier of death. This is poetry that balances ruthlessness and lyrical beauty; poetry alive to its time and audience; poetry not to be missed.'

Source : publisher's blurb

Year: 2021

winner y separately published work icon Case Notes David Stavanger , Nedlands : UWA Publishing , 2020 18541590 2020 selected work poetry

'Your name is not yours / once it’s in their mouth   

'The highly anticipated follow up to the award-winning collection The Special, this electric new body of work by David Stavanger is a mix tape of free verse, lyric poetry, found text, spoken word and flash fiction documenting the lived/living mental health experience and the well beyond.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Year: 2020

winner y separately published work icon Nganajungu Yagu Charmaine Papertalk-Green , Melbourne : Cordite Press , 2019 16924590 2019 selected work poetry

'Forty years ago, letters, words and feelings flowed between a teenage daughter and her mother. Letters writen by that teenage daughter – me – handed around family back home, disappeared. Yet letters from that mother to her teenage daughter – me – remained protected in my red life-journey suitcase. I carried them across time and landscapes as a mother would carry her baby in a thaga.

'In 1978–79, I was living in an Aboriginal girls’ hostel in the Bentley suburb of Perth, attending senior high school. Mum and I sent handwritten letters to each other. I was a small-town teenager stepping outside of all things I had ever known. Mum remained in the only world she had ever known.

'Nganajungu Yagu was inspired by Mother’s letters, her life and the love she instilled in me for my people and my culture. A substantial part of that culture is language, and I missed out on so much language interaction having moved away. I talk with my ancestors’ language – Badimaya and Wajarri – to honour ancestors, language centres, language workers and those Yamaji who have been and remain generous in passing on cultural knowledge.

'–Charmain Papertalk Green'  (Publication summary) 

Works About this Award

A $125K Day for Australian Poetry (And Why We're Starting to Listen) John Kinsella , 2014 single work column
— Appears in: Crikey , January 2014;

'Jennifer Maiden took home $125,000 last night as the overall winner of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards — Australia’s richest literary prize — for her collection of poetry Liquid Nitrogen. I can think of none more deserving.' (Author's introduction)

Writers' Literary Labours Bear Fruit Jason Steger , 2014 single work column
— Appears in: The Age , 29 January 2014; (p. 10)
Q&A with Justin Clemens 2009-2010 single work interview
— Appears in: Inscribe , Summer no. 1 2009-2010; (p. 11)
A Verse Case Scenario Don Anderson , 1988 single work column
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 31 December 1988; (p. 40)
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