Two bits of very lovely news! 

My ‘Sestina: Rape’, first published in The Moth Issue 42, was included in Banshee Lit’s Best of 2020 reading list by Irish poet Mark Ward and will be presented alongside American poet Patricia Smith’s ‘Ethel’s Sestina’ by professor of poetry and queer theory Stephen Guy-Bray in his book on line endings in Renaissance poetry, which will end with a discussion of contemporary poems.

My ‘Little Gilt’, a queer retelling/mash-up of Poe’s ‘The Raven’ and Marelle’s ‘The True History of Little Golden-Hood’, is a finalist in the 2021 NWF/joanne burns Microlit Award and will be published in its Pulped Fiction anthology. The shortlist and winners and details of the awards ceremony and book launch will be announced in early 2021.

Wishing everyone a peaceful end of the year! x

Thanks to Mark Roberts for publishing my launch speech of Benjamin Dodds’s brilliant second poetry collection Airplane Baby Banana Blanket (Recent Work Press) at Rochford Street Review. To read three poems from ABBB click here.

Some very lovely news — my ‘Triolet: Cerberus and Eros’ has been nominated by The Night Heron Barks for a Pushcart Prize. Thanks to wonderful Rogan Kelly and NHB’s wonderful editorial team and congratulations to fellow poets Lauren Camp, Jennifer Franklin, Airea D. Matthews, E.C. Messer and Chael Needle! Honoured to be included.

Fascinating conversation between Benjamin Dodds and Natasha Mitchell about Lucy the chimpanzee and Ben’s new poetry collection, Airplane Baby Banana Blanket, which reimagines Lucy’s extraordinary true story. You can listen to this Radio National Science Friction episode here.

You can register for the October 28, 2020 Zoom launch of Airplane Baby Banana Blanket here.

My cento ‘Shy Riot’ appears in Marrickville Pause’s History issue alongside writing by Claire Albrecht, Gayelene Carbis, Jennifer Compton, Jocelyn Deane, Dave Drayton, Joel Ephraims, Liam Ferney, Chris Holdaway, Mitchell Ryan and Jaya Savige. Thanks to editor Jake Goetz.

You can read the issue here.

VERY excited about launching dear friend Benjamin Dodds’s second poetry collection Airplane Baby Banana Blanket on October 28, 7:30–9pm. Special guest Judith Beveridge will read selected poems from both Airplane Baby Banana Blanket and her own work. Join us by registering here (a Zoom link will be sent prior to the launch).

Airplane Baby Banana Blanket is out October 1 through Recent Work Press.

Airplane Baby Banana Blanket is as strange as it is compelling. Dodds raises essential questions about human responsibility. His vernacular immediacy and musical freshness charge every page, his narrative and lyrical strategies are exemplary. Long after I finished it, this book’s contrapuntal tensions made it unforgettable. —Judith Beveridge

Lost to history are the countless species we have hurtled into space,​ experimented with, or severed from their own kin and instincts. Viscerally, Dodds gives them back their agency in the most lyrical and poignant of ways. Lucy [Temerlin, Airplane Baby Banana Blanket’s protagonist] will never leave you. —Natasha Mitchell

Delighted to have a poem, ‘Off-World Ghazal’, shortlisted for the 2020 Montreal International Poetry Prize! Thanks to the Competition Jury, including Jordan Abel, CA Conrad, Gillian Sze, Marilène Phipps. Winner announced mid-September.

Happy to have a poem about surviving trauma in The Moth Magazine’s Autumn 2020 issue, alongside writing by Tusiata Avia, Sharon Black, Guy Gunaratne and Roger Robinson.

Thanks to guest editor David Stavanger for selecting ‘Sestina: Rape’ (dedicated to the memory of Anita Cobby, with a nod to Jonah Winter and A.E. Stallings) and to Moth editor Rebecca O’Connor for terrific edits. The issue’s out early September, but you can pre-order now.

Delighted to have an Elizabeth Bishop-tinged poem, ‘Hamlet without the Prince’, in The Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry, alongside writing by Jordie Albiston, joanne burns, Gary Catalano, Anna Couani, Alex Skovron, Samuel Wagan Watson, Ania Walwicz and many more.

The anthology’s edited by Cassandra Atherton and Paul Hetherington, published by Melbourne University Press and released on September 29, 2020, but you can pre-order your copy here.

Thanks to Sara Saleh and Melinda Smith for including my poem ‘The morning fog (A Golden Shovel after Kate Bush)’ in Australian Poetry Anthology Volume 8 alongside poems by K Reed-Gilbert, Matt Hetherington, Shane Strange, Thom Sullivan, Cassandra Atherton, Rose Hunter, Rae White, Eunice Andrada, Penelope Layland, Jarad Bruinstroop, Anisa Nandaula, Tricia Dearborn and Alex Skovron et al.