Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize
Applications for the 2026 Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize are now open. Please visit the Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize page here for further information.
2024
Winner
Damen O'Brien 'Walking the Boundary'
Damen O’Brien is the author of several published poetry collections, and has an extensive publication record, including in Meanjin, Griffith Review, Cordite Poetry Journal, and Best Australian Poems. His work is lively, ambitious, and accomplished. The selection committee noted in particular the poet’s interest in writing on place, which this prize will facilitate. The poet has already demonstrated an interest in writing about Ireland, and his work has placed in several international poetry competitions based in Ireland. O’Brien also has connections already in the Irish poetry community, despite having been unable to travel there to date, and a genuine interest in the place and the literary scene. The selection committee is confident this poet will make excellent use of the award, in terms of poetic output.
Commended
Natalie Rose Dyer 'My Mother the River, My Father the Storm'
Jennifer Harrison 'After . Echo'
Duncan Hose 'Bunratty'
David Musgrave 'Selected Poems'
Leni Shilton 'The Visit'
Selection committee
- Maxine Beneba Clarke, Peter Steele Poet in Residence, Faculty of Arts
- Dr Andy Jackson, Creative Writing, School of Culture and Communication, Faculty of Arts
- Professor Ronan McDonald, Gerry Higgins Chair of Irish Studies, School of Culture and Communication, Faculty of Arts
2020
Winner
Susannah Dickey 'genuine human values'
The poems in 'genuine human values' are an animated anti–heroic rewriting of Marlowe’s mini–epic Hero and Leander, already parodied – but in quite a different way – by Byron after he swam across the Hellespont in 1810. Dickey’s verse drama and prose poems begin with H watching as L’s body is pulled out of the sea. What follows is a caustic contemporary meditation on love, obedience, hope and the future – for a young woman whose life from the point of view of those around her is already over. This is smart, fresh, inventive poetry, a brief but exhilarating series of encounters and interventions that muddy the waters around its protagonist and usher in an important new talent in Irish writing.
Commended
Stephen Sexton 'If All the World and Love Were Young'
Selection committee
- Professor Ken Gelder, English and Theatre Studies, School of Culture and Communication, Faculty of Arts
- Emeritus Professor Kevin Brophy, Poet and Honorary, School of Culture and Communication, Faculty of Arts
- Professor Ronan McDonald, Gerry Higgins Chair of Irish Studies, School of Culture and Communication, Faculty of Arts
2018
Winner
Joel Deane 'Year of the Wasp'
Joel Deane’s poetry gives us striking and perceptive images of the world he moves through – actual local places like Melbourne’s Westgate bridge to distant locations he either visits or imagines and recreates. He charts his experiences with a vivid precision, dissecting his thoughts in ways that pay delirious tribute to the many possibilities of the poetic form. 'Year of the Wasp' is partly a chronicle of Deane’s recovery after a stroke. The loss of language here becomes mythological, and is regained with an acute and critical awareness of the everyday world. Deane’s poetry can turn to political matters on the one hand, while burrowing into the most intimately fraught experiences on the other. These glimpsed moments of cruelty and suffering sit alongside a series of touching insights into human love and warmth and the celebration of a human capacity to survive and endure: "we love this life we are leaving", he writes, "and are unafraid of the next." The sheer vitality of Joel Deane’s poetry will no doubt invite an energetic and creative engagement with Irish poets and place through the Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize.
Commended
Diane Fahey 'The Listening'
Simon West 'The Water Track'
Selection committee
- Professor Ken Gelder, English and Theatre Studies, School of Culture and Communication, Faculty of Arts
- Professor Peter Otto, Acting Head, School of Culture and Communication, Faculty of Arts
- Dr Linda Weste, Creative Writing, School of Culture and Communication, Faculty of Arts
2017
Winner
James Harpur 'In Loco Parentis'
James Harpur is an accomplished poet with a compelling narrative voice and unpretentious style. His forthcoming book ‘In Loco Parentis’ chronicles family and institutional life in poetry that is alive to characters and the ways they can affect each other.
Selection committee
- Professor Kevin Brophy, Creative Writing, School of Culture and Communication, Faculty of Arts
- Professor Ken Gelder, English and Theatre Studies, School of Culture and Communication, Faculty of Arts
- Professor Denise Varney, Co–director of the Australian Centre, University of Melbourne
2014
Winner
Dan Disney 'either, Orpheus'
The selection committee awarded the Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize 2014 to an emerging Australian poet whose work is sophisticated, fresh, and at times precisely located in the towns of his birthplace in Eastern Victoria. Dan Disney’s beautifully produced book provides the basis for a reading tour of Ireland that will showcase a poetry of wit, verve and serious philosophical inquiry.
Commended
Andy Kissane
Selection committee
- Professor Kevin Brophy, Creative Writing, School of Culture and Communication, Faculty of Arts
- Professor Ken Gelder, English and Theatre Studies, School of Culture and Communication, Faculty of Arts
- Professor Denise Varney, Co–director of the Australian Centre, University of Melbourne
2012
Winner
Miriam Gamble
The selection committee considered Gamble's work was forthright, energetic and technically skilled. There is both darkness and a weird humour to her poetry.
Commended
James Harpur
Selection committee
- Professor Kevin Brophy, Creative Writing, School of Culture and Communication, Faculty of Arts
- Jane Crawley, Manager Arts and Culture, City of Melbourne
- Dr Bronwyn Lea, Senior Lecturer in Writing, University of Queensland