I’ve recently had a chapbook—HUSH—published by the wonderful small Australian Blank Rune Press. The publisher, Valli Poole, was a dream to work with—she’s so passionate and particular about what she does, and as a result the books (which she hand-makes) are exquisite. Blank Rune only do a very limited print run, and Valli has told me HUSH has almost sold …
I’m thrilled to have been asked (along with Queensland poet, Nathan Shepherdson) to co-judge this year’s Queensland Poetry Festival Philip Bacon Ekphrasis Award. This award, now in its third year, is named after one of Australia’s premier art dealers, Philip Bacon. The word ekphrasis comes from the Greek ek (out) & phrasis (speak), and is a rhetorical device in which a visual object, …
I contemplate your arc, which has been cut. Your projected ghost limb twitching in the glare of my grand truncated hope. Grief breaking bounds and bearing us fused into myth. Listen, I’m a mother, your mother — It’s my job to scout ahead. Even in a world that scoffs at maternal prescience I persist, baying like a bitch at spectres …
I’m chuffed to have my poem Hush appear in the recent Confession Issue of Cordite Poetry Review. There are some extraordinary poems in the issue, as well as some stunning photography by Therese Ritchie. My thanks to editors Keri Glastonbury & Kent MacCarter! Hush You’re bloated and there is fear in your gaze. You’ve demanded the right to be this way and I …
I’m thrilled to announce the publication of a new chapbook written in conjunction with my dear friend and stellar poet, Robbie Coburn. Scar to Scar was conceived when Robbie sent me a poem and I replied, in kind, with a poem I ‘found’ within his, re-ordering his original text as a form of poetic alchemy. Our collaboration developed over the next …
I’ve been lucky to receive a number of very positive and thoughtful reviews of my poetry collection, Engraft: one by Mary Cresswell in Plumwood Mountain; another by Magdalena Ball in The Compulsive Reader; and a third, by Alyson Miller, in Cordite Poetry Review. My sincere thanks to the reviewers and to the editors of these excellent journals — Anne Elvey, Magdalena Ball …
every morning i wake, i wake surprised. that life appears again with each opening of these eyes. that eyes arise with opening of each day. that when both close, all i’s fall away.
Reviewing is a labour of love, and in this case the labour was a long one — elephantine in fact — nearly two years gestation! Thank heavens this review popped out in the end, of David Stavanger’s intriguing poetry collection, The Special: This book is dedicated to the dead who are bravely living (and to those who wake wild-eyed in the …
I’m honoured to have a poem published in Writing to the Wire, an excellent new anthology edited by Dan Disney and Kit Kelen (University of Western Australia Publishing). “Writing to the Wire is a collection of poems by Australians and people who would like to be Australians. It is a book about the idea of being Australian. It is about …
I had a blast talking to the lovely Alice Allan on her new podcast, Poetry Says. We spoke about a poem I’ve become rather obsessed with, Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘Giant Snail‘. I liked the poem so much, in fact, that I wrote one of my own inspired by it! You can listen to the podcast here and read my homage to ‘Giant …