# Victorian Premier's Prize for Poetry

The Victorian Premier's Prize for Poetry, formerly known as the C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry, is a prize category in the annual Victorian Premier's Literary Award. As of 2011 it has an enumeration of A$25,000. The winner of this category prize vies with 4 other category winners for overall Victorian Prize for Literature valued at an additional A$100,000.
The prize was formerly known as the C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry from inception until 2010, when the awards were re-established under the stewardship of the Wheeler Centre and restarted with new prize amounts and a new name. It was named after the early twentieth century vernacular poet C. J. Dennis.

## Victorian Premier's Prize for Poetry

Victorian Premier's Prize for Poetry winners and finalists :
| Year | Author | Title | Result |
| 2011 | Cate Kennedy | The Taste of River Water | Winner |
| 2011 | Libby Hart | This Floating World | Finalist |
| 2011 | Claire Potter | Swallow | Finalist |
| 2012 | John Kinsella | Armour | Winner |
| 2012 | Michelle Cahill | Vishvarupa | Finalist |
| 2012 | John Mateer | Southern Barbarians | Finalist |
| 2014 | Jennifer Maiden | Liquid Nitrogen | Winner |
| 2014 | Michael Brennan | Autoethnographic | Finalist |
| 2014 | Brendan Ryan | Travelling Through the Family | Finalist |
| 2015 | Jill Jones | The Beautiful Anxiety | Winner |
| 2015 | Andy Kissane | Radiance | Finalist |
| 2015 | Susan Bradley Smith | Bed For All Who Come | Finalist |
| 2016 | Alan Loney | Crankhandle | Winner |
| 2016 | Lucy Dougan | The Guardians | Finalist |
| 2016 | Peter Rose | The Subject of Feeling | Finalist |
| 2017 | Maxine Beneba Clarke | Carrying the World | Winner |
| 2017 | Eileen Chong | Painting Red Orchids | Finalist |
| 2017 | Tina Giannoukos | Bull Days | Finalist |
| 2018 | Bella Li | Argosy | Winner |
| 2018 | Jennifer Maiden | The Metronome | Finalist |
| 2018 | Eddie Paterson | redactor | Finalist |
| 2019 | Kate Lilley | Tilt | Winner |
| 2019 | Eunice Andrada | Flood Damages | Finalist |
| 2019 | Rae White | Milk Teeth | Finalist |
| 2020 | Charmaine Papertalk Green | Nganajungu Yagu | Winner |
| 2020 | Louise Crisp | Yuiquimbiang | Finalist |
| 2020 | L. K. Holt | Birth Plan | Finalist |
| 2021 | David Stavanger | Case Notes | Winner |
| 2021 | Rebecca Jessen | Ask Me About the Future | Finalist |
| 2021 | Ellen van Neerven | Throat | Finalist |
| 2022 | Maria Takolander | Trigger Warning | Winner |
| 2022 | Maxine Beneba Clarke | How Decent Folk Behave | Finalist |
| 2022 | Andy Jackson | Human Looking | Finalist |
| 2023 | Gavin Yuan Gao | At the Altar of Touch | Winner |
| 2023 | Scott-Patrick Mitchell | Clean | Finalist |
| 2023 | Simon Tedeschi | Fugitive | Finalist |
| 2024 | Grace Yee | Chinese Fish | Winner |
| 2024 | Susie Anderson | the body country | Finalist |
| 2024 | Claire Miranda Roberts | Kangaroo Paw | Finalist |
| 2025 | Jeanine Leane | Gawimarra: Gathering | Winner |
| 2025 | Jake Goetz | Holocene Pointbreaks | Finalist |
| 2025 | Hasib Hourani | rock flight | Finalist |

## C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry (inactive)

This award is no longer active. It was renamed in 2011 to Victorian Premier's Prize for Poetry (see above).
C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry winners and finalists :
| Year | Author | Title | Ref. |
| 1985 | Rosemary Dobson | The Three Fates | Winner |
| 1985 | Kevin Hart | Your Shadow | Winner |
| 1986 | Rhyll McMaster | Washing the Money | Winner |
| 1986 | John A. Scott | St. Clair | Winner |
| 1987 | Lily Brett | The Auschwitz Poems | Winner |
| 1988 | Judith Beveridge | The Domesticity of Giraffes | Winner |
| 1989 | Gwen Harwood | Bone Scan | Winner |
| 1990 | Robert Adamson | The Clean Dark | Winner |
| 1991 | Jennifer Maiden | The Winter Baby | Winner |
| 1992 | Robert Harris | Jane, Interlinear and Other Poems | Winner |
| 1993 | Les Murray | Translations from the Natural World | Winner |
| 1994 | Robert Gray | Certain Things | Winner |
| 1995 | Bruce Beaver | Anima and Other Poems | Winner |
| 1996 | Peter Bakowski | In the Human Night | Winner |
| 1997 | Les Murray | Subhuman Redneck Poems | Winner |
| 1998 | Coral Hull | Broken Land | Winner |
| 1999 | Gig Ryan | Pure and Applied | Winner |
| 2000 | John Millett | Iceman | Winner |
| 2001 | John Mateer | Barefoot Speech | Winner |
| 2002 | Robert Gray | Afterimages......syp | Winner |
| 2003 | Emma Lew | Anything the Landlord Touches | Winner |
| 2003 | Jordie Albiston | The Fall | Finalist |
| 2003 | S. K. Kelen | Goddess of Mercy | Finalist |
| 2004 | Judith Beveridge | Wolf Notes | Winner |
| 2004 | Michael Brennan | The Imageless World | Finalist |
| 2004 | Anthony Lawrence | The Sleep of a Learning Man | Finalist |
| 2005 | M. T. C. Cronin | <More Or Less Than>1-100 | Winner |
| 2005 | John Kinsella | Doppler Effect | Finalist |
| 2005 | Morgan Yasbincek | Firelick | Finalist |
| 2006 | John Tranter | Urban Myths: 210 Poems | Winner |
| 2006 | B. R. Dionysius | Universal Andalusia | Finalist |
| 2006 | Susan Hampton | The Kindly Ones | Finalist |
| 2007 | Judy Johnson | Jack | Winner |
| 2007 | Robert Adamson | The Goldfinches of Babylon | Finalist |
| 2007 | John Watson | Montale: A Biographical Anthology | Finalist |
| 2008 | Lisa Gorton | Press Release | Winner |
| 2008 | Judith Bishop | Event | Finalist |
| 2008 | Barry Hill | As We Draw Ourselves | Finalist |
| 2009 | Robert Adamson | The Golden Bird | Winner |
| 2009 | Carol Jenkins | Fishing in the Devonian | Finalist |
| 2009 | Bronwyn Lea | The Other Way Out | Finalist |
| 2010 | Anna Kerdijk Nicholson | Possession | Winner |
| 2010 | Peter Bakowski | Beneath Our Armour | Finalist |
| 2010 | Ian McBryde | The Adoption Order | Finalist |