2021 Peter Steele Poetry Award

Congratulations to Dr Natalie Rose Dyer who has been awarded the prestigious Peter Steele Poetry Award for 2021.

Dr Dyer completed a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Melbourne (2017) where she also earned an MFA (2010) with an Australian Postgraduate Award. Natalie was Researcher-in-Residence at The University of Amsterdam (2018).

The award honours Professor Peter Steele SJ AM, a loved and esteemed member of the University of Melbourne community, and a poet and teacher of literature whose work continues to inspire new generations of poets. A winner of the Christopher Brennan Award for lifetime achievement in poetry, he was also the scholar-in-residence at Newman College for over two decades until his death in 2012.

The Judges' (Associate Professor Sara Wills, Dr Eddie Paterson and Associate Professor Justin Clemens) were impressed with the outstanding quality of Dr Dyer's work.  The panel commented:

"Natalie Rose Dyer's submission evidenced outstanding accomplishment as well as extraordinary promise. Her poems are cognitively charged, formally versatile, and crackle with affective energy. Often sinister but never cynical, Dyer's singular poems speak back to such canonical figures as Seamus Heaney, as they project themselves imaginatively forward into the unknown. Handling her themes with sensitivity and insight, Dyer's work eminently fits the spirit and intent of the Peter Steele Poetry Award".

Upon receiving the Award, Dr Dyer said:

"It is a wonderful honour to be awarded the Peter Steele Poetry Award 2021. This award gives me much encouragement toward achieving my most cherished goal, which is to publish a first volume of poetry".  On detailing her future plans, Dr Dyer goes on to say "I will use the $4,000 awarded to enrol in the Advanced Poetry course with Faber Academy. It is an excellent opportunity to dedicate six months to my craft towards completing work on my first manuscript of poems for publication in 2022".

The Peter Steele Poetry Award is supported by the generous contribution of a group of donors including The Hon Susan M Crennan AC QC and Dr Michael Crennan QC, Allan Myers AC QC and Maria Myers AC, Dr Jack Steele, and seven additional contributors.

The University of Melbourne would like to congratulate Dr Dyer on this well-deserved recognition.

• If you would like to support a new generation of literary graduates and contribute to a bright future for poetry, donate to the Peter Steele Poetry Trust Fund