Looking forward to reading poems from Glasshouses and new poems in Brisbane next month.

Friday August 6, 5:55–7pm, Brisbane Square Library’s End Room. FREE event, bookings essential. Love to see you there!

So pleased my poem ‘Duplex’ (HIV Used to Be a Death Sentence) is in the summer issue of Poetry Wales, which you can pre-order here, alongside writing by Mary Jean Chan, Kate Clanchy, Hannah Lowe, Helen Mort and Marvin Thompson et al.

Thanks to editor Zoë Brigley for including this one, which takes its first line from an article published in TIME on World AIDS Day 2016.

The duplex is a wonderful form—‘a ghazal that is also a sonnet that is also a blues poem’—invented by American poet Jericho Brown. Jericho says more about the duplex here. You can read his ‘Duplex’ (A poem is a gesture toward home) here.

Thanks to editors Judith Nangala Crispin and PS Cottier for including my poem ‘Delonix regia (Royal Poinciana)’ in The Canberra Times, April 2021. To listen to Nat King Cole’s swirling version of ‘Poinciana (Song Of The Tree)’ click here.

Island Magazine recently launched a fab new website. I’m delighted my poem ‘Sonnet 29’, for dear Sandy Mitchell, is a part of the relaunch, alongside wonderful poems by Felicity Plunkett, Jill Jones, Cassandra Atherton, Jo Langdon, Ellen van Neerven, Suneeta Peres da Costa, Anne Kellas, Pete Hay, Sarah Day, Eileen Chong, Toby Fitch, Gavin Yates, A Frances Johnson, Yaaran Ellis, Chloe Wilson, Judith Beveridge, Graham Akhurst, Damen O’Brien, Jake Goetz, Belinda Rule, Ouyang Yu and Stephen Edgar + fiction, nonfiction and arts features.

You can read ‘Sonnet 29’ here and explore Island’s new website here.

Marie Ponsot, who invented the tritina, described the small form as ‘the square root of the sestina’.

Thanks to editors Angela Gardner, Carmen Leigh Keates and Kerry Kilner for including my poems ‘Tritina after Sartre’ and ‘Bone Scan’ (a blackout poem after Gwen Harwood’s ‘Bone Scan’) in foam:e Issue 17, alongside writing by Jennifer Compton, Jake Goetz, Stu Hatton, Rose Hunter, A. Frances Johnson, Anthony Lynch, Thuy On, Shane Strange and Janet Jiahui Wiu, among others.

You can read the full issue here.

I’m really looking forward to guest editing this issue of Australian Poetry Journal with Claire Gaskin (whose fourth poetry collection, Eurydice Speaks, is out now with Hunter Publishers).

Australian-born or international poets are welcome to submit. Submissions close 11:59pm June 1, 2021.

Full guidelines here.

I loved guest co-editing Rabbit 32: FORM with Charmaine Papertalk Green. Thanks to everyone who sent poems (1100!). Hope you’ll enjoy the 30 we selected (for full list of contributors click here). Huge thanks to Jessica Wilkinson and Team Rabbit.

This issue features artwork by Brendan Fitzpatrick and includes First Nations Poetry selected by Jeanine Leane, interviews with Ebony Stewart and Elena Gomez, essays by Derek Beaulieu, Josie/Jocelyn Deane and Antonia Pont & Oliver Driscoll, reviews, Rabbit homework with Dave Drayton and more!

Order your copy here.

Congratulations to Ellen van Neerven, recipient of the 2021 Red Room Poetry Fellowship for ‘Kweensland: Sovereign Bodies and the Colonial Nation-State’, and to shortlisted poets Anne Elvey, Benjamin Dodds, Brenda Saunders, Em König, Jill Jones, Sara Saleh, Scott-Patrick Mitchell, Toby Fitch and Tricia Dearborn. Thanks to everyone who applied for the Fellowship, to fellow judges Jeanine Leane and Jessica Alice, and to Red Room Company.

You can read Ellen’s Statement (and our Judging Notes) here.

Happy World Poetry Day!

My recording of my poem ‘Off-World Ghazal’, inspired by Judith Wright’s ‘Black Cockatoos’ and shortlisted for the Montreal International Poetry Prize 2020, is now online.

You can listen to (and read) the poem here.

Massive congrats to 2021 Red Room Poetry Fellowship shortlistees Anne Elvey, Benjamin Dodds, Brenda Saunders, Ellen van Neerven, Em König, Jill Jones, Sara Saleh, Scott-Patrick Mitchell, Toby Fitch and Tricia Dearborn!

Huge thank you to everyone who applied as well as Red Room’s wonderful Tamryn Bennett and Annie Te-Whiu and fab fellow judges Jeanine Leane and Jessica Alice. You can read our judging notes and more about the shortlistees etc here.

The 2021 Fellow will be announced at 3pm AEDT on Sunday 21 March (World Poetry Day) as part of Red Room’s Poetry Month online launch. You can RSVP here.