Island 164 is out now and includes my poem ‘Sestina after B. Carlisle’, which won the 2021/22 Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize, and the poems by runners-up Andrew Sutherland (‘Antarctica’) and John Foulcher (‘The Girls Become’). The issue also includes fiction by Eliza Henry-Jones (‘The Wolves’), nonfiction by Lesh Karan (‘Mera Pata’) and nine poems from The More Than Human Poetry Project. 

You can order your copy of Island 164 here. 

Happy to have poems in three new anthologies. 

‘travel ban’, shortlisted for the Newcastle Writers Festival joanne burns Microlit Award, has been published in Travel: An Anthology of Microlit (ed. Cassandra Atherton) alongside writing by Emma Ashmere, Seetha Nambiar Dodd, Anne Elvey, Dominique Hecq, Scott-Patrick Mitchell, Bahar Razaghi, Beth Spencer et al. You can order your copy of Travel here.

‘Off-world Ghazal’ has been published in Australian Poetry Anthology Volume 9, 2021–2022 (eds Lucy Dougan, Michelle Cahill), alongside poems by Magdalena Ball, Jarad Bruinstroop, Derek Chan, Rico Craig, Angela Gardner, Claire Gaskin, Stu Hatton, Harold Legaspi, Jill Jones, Kaya Ortiz, Heather Taylor-Johnson et al. 

‘Off-world Ghazal’, ‘The morning fog’ (A Golden Shovel after Kate Bush), ‘Hamlet without the Prince’ and ‘The Being’ have been published in The Language in My Tongue: An Anthology of Australian and New Zealand Poetry (eds Cassandra Atherton, Paul Hetherington) alongside poems by Jordie Albiston, Merlinda Bobis, joanne burns, Judith Nangala Crispin, David Eggleton, Felicity Plunkett, Essa May Ranapiri, Gig Ryan, Chris Tse, Samuel Wagan Watson, Jessica L. Wilkinson et al. You can order your copy of The Language in My Tongue, described by Marjorie Perloff as ‘remarkable for its exuberance, its vitality, and the notably youthful vibrancy of its free verse as well as its innovative prose poetry,’ here.  

Some exciting news — my poem ‘Sestina after B. Carlisle’ has won the 2021/22 Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize!

Thanks to judges Kate Middleton, Ali Alizadeh and Aidan Coleman and everyone at Island Magazine. Special thanks to friends who read and commented on the poem. You can read Kate Middleton’s comments here.

Congratulations to runners-up Andrew Sutherland and John Foulcher (our poems will appear in Island 164, out soon) and highly commendeds Kay Are and Roland Leach (theirs will appear in Island 165). You can subscribe to Island here.

Thanks to Rogan Kelly and the team at The Night Heron Barks for including my poem ‘Sketching Aids’ in the Fall 2021 issue alongside poems by Sharon Olds, Jason Schneiderman and Joan Kwon Glass, among others.

You can read my poem, published alongside Marisol’s Untitled from an untitled portfolio (1978), here.

My poem ‘Sestina: Pain’, featuring Betty Wright, Betty White and Gwen Harwood, has been shortlisted for the 2021 ACU Prize for Poetry. Thanks to the judges and congratulations to the writers of the winning and highly commended poems.

You can read ‘Sestina: Pain’ here and order a copy of the 2021 ACU Prize for Poetry Anthology here.

Over. The. Moon.

My second poetry collection Like To The Lark will be published by Upswell in February 2023!

I’m thrilled to be working with the lovely Terri-ann White. Huge thanks to Terri-ann, friends and family.

I can’t wait to share this really personal book, dedicated to the memory of my friend Sandy Mitchell, with you.

To look at Upswell Publishing’s brilliant list click here.

To listen to my Like To The Lark Spotify playlist click here.

Thanks to guest editors Elena Gomez and Sarah Gory and managing editor Kent MacCarter for including my poem ‘Duplex’ — about Neomarica gracilis (Walking iris) — in Cordite‘s AMBLE issue alongside beauties by Lachlan Brown, Angela Gardner, Jake Goetz, Ashley Haywood, Cameron Lowe, Sarah Temporal, Samuel Wagan Watson, Rae White, Cyril Wong and many others.

‘Duplex’ will also appear in my second poetry collection Like To The Lark, out through Upswell Publishing in February 2023.

You can read the full issue here.

A privilege to be a part of Memory Book: Portraits of Older Australians in Poetry and Watercolours, which ‘shares and celebrates the fascinating life stories of everyday Australians, including First Nations elders and migrants, and is based on one-on-one interviews with over forty participants’. The anthology is edited by Jessica L. Wilkinson and Cassandra Atherton, with Preface by Sarah Holland-Batt.

For this project I drank cuppas and chatted with two dear friends, Noel and Vallis, who live in Rockhampton, Central Queensland, then wrote the poems ‘NO-VA-MA-LE-A’ and ‘Just Between You and Me’. Thrilled these appear alongside poems by Carolyn Abbs, Ali Alizadeh, Cassandra Atherton, Lachlan Brown, Eileen Chong, Ali Cobby Eckermann, Aidan Coleman, Paul Hetherington, Siobhan Hodge, Jeanine Leane, Leni Shilton, Ben Walter, Nick Whittock and Jess Wilkinson.

You can order your copy of Memory Book here.

Loved guest-editing Australian Poetry Journal 11.1 ‘local, attention’ with the wonderful Claire Gaskin (whose latest collection, Ismene’s Survivable Resistance, is also out now, through Puncher & Wattmann).

This issue of APJ includes poems by Merlinda Bobis, Lachlan Brown, Gavin Yuan Gao, Keri Glastonbury, Charmaine Papertalk Green, Kristin Hannaford, Dominique Hecq, Matt Hetherington, Jill Jones, Felicity Plunkett, Beth Spencer, Prithvi Varatharajan, Dženana Vucic, Rae White and Jessica L. Wilkinson etc.

You can read the full Contents and our Foreword here and order your copy here.

This month’s VOLTA POETRY is heading ONLINE. The event will be livestreamed on the Queensland Poetry Facebook page, August 6 from 6:00pm. Looking forward to reading new poems and poems from Glasshouses. Love to see you there!