B. R. Dionysius began writing poetry in 1985 in Year 11 aged 16 when has was at Dalby State High School on the Darling Downs in Queensland, Australia. For some reason he asked his English teacher Mrs Wylie if he could write a poem for an assessment item instead of the required analytical essay. She acquiesced which was very Finnish of her and he wrote “Summer Skies” his first ever poem about a prisoner looking out through a jail cell and identifying with some free birds. Mrs Wylie then passed the poem onto the English Head of Department who read it out to his Year 12 class. Then it was published in the school magazine that year. Then he entered it into a regional western high school writing competition run by the D.D.I.A.E (University of Southern Queensland today) where it didn’t win or place – but was published in an anthology “Through Our Eyes” edited by the famous Australian poet – Bruce Dawe who was teaching there in the 80s, and whose poetry he was studying in class at the time. So, because that one single poem had some legs – he decided to write more.
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Writers Fringe Festival (1993-1996) the Subverse: Queensland Poetry Festival (1997-2001), The Arts Queensland Award for Unpublished Poetry (now the Val Vallis Award for Unpublished Poetry) published the poetry broadsheet, Seriously Fishy, and ran literary events in Brisbane including Chalice Poets, With Baited Breath and The Word Made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.
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 has also been awarded the 1998 Harri Jones Memorial Prize, the 2009 Max Harris Poetry Award, and the 2016 Paul Sherman Community Poetry Award.
Among his publications are 9 poetry collections – an artist’s book, The Barflies’ Chorus (1995), poetry books including Fatherlands (2000, Five Island’s Press); Bacchanalia (2002, Interactive Press), Bowra (2013, Whitmore Press), Weranga (2013, Walleah Press), Critical State (2022, Calanthe Press), a verse novel Universal Andalusia (2006, SOI 3 Press), and the poetry chapbooks The Negativity Bin (2010, Press Press) and The Curious Noise of History (2011, Picaro Press).
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 won or been shortlisted in 86 poetry awards since 1992, both nationally and internationally, including shortlistings in the 2013 and 2017 Montreal International Poetry Prize.
His tenth poetry collection, Not for Heroics (Liquid Amber Press) is forthcoming in November 2026. His eleventh and twelfth poetry collections Extinction Sonnets (Walleah Press) and The Eromanga Sea (Calanthe Press) for which he was a recipient of a 2023 Queensland Writers’ Fellowship from Arts Queensland, the State Library of Qld and the QWC, are forthcoming in 2027.
Since July 2024 he has curated Brisbane’s niche monthly poetry event – poets@stones at the independent bookstore, Books@stones in Stones Corner Brisbane.
