2026
1st Place. Kyogle Readers & Writers Festival Poetry Comp: ‘If an Octopus can ride on the back of a Mako Shark in the Hauraki Gulf’ https://kraw.com.au/if-an-octopus-can-ride-on-the-back-of-a-mako-shark-in-the-hauraki-gulf/
The winner was a poem we each found so memorable we kept returning to it. If an octopus can ride on the back of a Mako Shark takes inspiration from a viral internet moment, acting as an antidote for screen addiction. The poet invites us to share in awe with a series of striking descriptions of the event in which octopus and shark “form a fellowship of muscle and cartilage… dissolving blue borders / like a wet page”. –Judges Sarah Temporal, Angela Szczotko and Jasmine Anoushian.
2nd Place. Kyogle Readers & Writers Festival Poetry Comp: ‘Pull yourself together, Chook’ https://kraw.com.au/pull-yourself-together-chook/
In second place, Pull Yourself Together Chook was a startling, surreal dance through grief which surfaces in mundane moments: “I slipped on your memory in the kitchen last week, / caught my ribs on the edge of your absence…”
–Judges Sarah Temporal, Angela Szczotko and Jasmine Anoushian.
2025
Highly Commended. Liquid Amber Poetry Prize: The view under the bridge south of Kingscliff, at 5am’. 2025 Poetry Prize – and the winners are … – Liquid Amber Press
“Kim Kenyon’s Highly Commended poem ‘The view under the bridge south of Kingscliff, at 5am’ offers a quiet and gentle lyric of observation and insight as we stand, with the poet, ‘Still as a curlew.“
– Judges Willo Drummond and Ali Whitlock
Commended. Ros Spencer Poetry Prize: ‘Things that are alived’. https://wapoets.com/2025-ros-spencer-contest-winners/
– Judge Kevin Gillam“A poem with very strong diction and turns of phrase, such as an “indignation of crickets”, “fits into her limbs” and “Skin our noses/ on the mumble of mushrooms, gloaming of boulders, crackle of wing/ across light.” The form used in lines cascading inwards very much adds to the flow. An emotionally engaging discourse as to time spent between a mother and daughter. “
Scholarship Recipient. Faber Online Poetry Course with Dan Hogan.
Moreton Bay Winner. Australian Poetry Slam Regional Heats. Kim Kenyon Qld APS25 | Australian Poetry Slam
Shortlisted. Calanthe Prize for an Unpublished Poem: If an octopus can ride on the back of a Mako Shark in the Hauraki Gulf.
Shortlisted. Calanthe Prize for an Unpublished Poem: The view under the bridge south of Kingscliff, at 5am.
Kim Kenyon 