Brett (B R) Dionysius – July 26 2020

Brett is an editor, educator and award-winning poet. He holds a Bachelor of Education and a Master of Philosophy (Creative Writing) and tutors at Griffith University and teaches English in secondary schools. Brett’s poetry has been widely published in literary journals, anthologies, newspapers and online. He was awarded a New Work Grant from the Literature Fund of the Australia Council to write the verse novel, Universal Andalusia, and a grant from Arts Queensland to write his poetry collection, Bacchanalia. His other works include the poetry collections Fatherlands and Bowra, chapbook The Curious Noise of History, artist’s book The Barflies’ Chorus (etchings by Danny Yates) and The Extinction Sonnets (2006, unpublished). Brett was founding Director of the Queensland Poetry Festival and Director of Fringe Arts Collective Inc. He has been editor of the QWC News Magazine and a general poetry editor for Papertiger: New World Poetry CDROM and published the poetry broadsheet, Seriously Fishy. Together with poets Liz Hall-Downs and Sam Wagan Watson he wrote a sequence of poems, Blackfellas Whitefellas Wetlands: Poetry and Music from Boondall Wetlands as part of Brisbane City Council’s 1996-1999 Brisbane Stories project.

The Negativity Bin
PressPress in 2010; ISBN 9780980771879
A chapbook examining contemporary unemployment in Australia, the humiliation of job search training, Centrelink, etc., juxtaposed with highlights of cultural evolution from J Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man. It’s a cheeky hybrid look at the current political, cultural and social atmosphere in Australia and more universally. Like Andalusia, it is a more humorous attempt at dealing with quite serious contemporary social issues. The Negativity Bin won the 2010 PressPress Chapbook Award with its sure tone and clever, witty response to an unlikely topic: unemployment.

Weranga
Walleah Press, 2013; ISBN: 9781877010378
“This is a rural, seemingly highly personal, coming-of-age memoir …. a collection of poems drenched in nostalgia for the rural, and for the evaporating notion of its isolation in a rapidly technological world.” – David Dick, Cordite Poetry Review
“Brett Dionysius has established himself as a poet whose attention to craft and the variousness of a line’s potential music sets him apart from many poets of his generation. With Weranga, a sequence of sixty-seven sonnets, he has employed these hard-won skills to great effect. Lyrical, accessible and layered with his trademark ability to bring new life to common ground. This is a wonderful collection celebrating rural life in Australia in the 1970’s and 80’s.” – Anthony Lawrence