The Best Australian Poems 2017

by Sarah Holland-Batt

  John Foulcher has published eleven books of poetry, the most recent being A Casual Penance (Pitt Street Poetry, 2017) and 101 Poems (Pitt Street Poetry, 2016), the latter a selection from his other books. For over thirty-five years, his poems have appeared in magazines, newspapers and anthologies throughout Australia. He lives in Canberra.

  William Fox is a poet from Melbourne. His work has been published in Meanjin, Overland, Southerly, Island, the Age, previous The Best Australian Poems editions, and elsewhere.

  Angela Gardner is the author of four poetry collections. Her first poetry collection Parts of Speech (UQP, 2007) won the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize, then followed Views of The Hudson (Shearsman Books UK, 2009). Her most recent collections are The Told World (Shearsman Books UK, 2014) and Thing&Unthing (Vagabond Press, 2014). She is a visual artist with work in major public collections. She edits the poetry journal foam:e.

  Lisa Gorton lives in Melbourne and writes poetry, fiction and essays. Her most recent publications, both from Giramondo, are the poetry collection Hotel Hyperion and a novel, The Life of Houses.

  Phillip Hall lives in Melbourne’s Sunshine where he is a passionate member of the Western Bulldogs Football Club. His publications include Diwurruwurru: Poetry from the Gulf of Carpentaria (Blank Rune Press) and Borroloola Class (IPSI). Fume, a collection of essays and poetry celebrating Carpentaria’s First Australians, is forthcoming with UWAP.

  Natalie Harkin is a Narungga woman from South Australia. She is an academic and activist-poet with an interest in the state’s colonial archives. Her words have been installed in several exhibitions and she has written for Overland, Southerly and Cordite. Her manuscript Dirty Words was published by Cordite Books in 2015.

  Dr. Jennifer Harrison has published seven poetry collections, most recently the chapbook Air Variations (University of Canberra, 2017). Her eighth collection Anywhy is forthcoming from Black Pepper Press, Melbourne. In 2012 she was awarded the Christopher Brennan Award for sustained achievement in Australian poetry.

  Dimitra Harvey has a MA in creative writing from the University of Sydney. Her poetry has appeared in Meanjin, Southerly, Mascara, and Cordite as well as anthologies such as The Stars Like Sand and A Patch of Sun. In 2012, she won the ASA’s Ray Koppe Young Writer’s Residency.

  John Hawke teaches literary studies at Monash University. His volume of poetry, Aurelia (Cordite Books), won the Anne Elder Award.

  Dominique Hecq has a PhD in literary studies, and a background in languages, psychoanalysis and translation. She is the author of thirteen full-length creative works. Hush: A Fugue is her latest book of poetry (UWAP, 2017).

  Paul Hetherington has published eleven full-length poetry collections and six chapbooks. He won the 2014 Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards (poetry) and was shortlisted for the 2017 Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry. He is head of the International Poetry Studies Institute at the University of Canberra.

  Barry Hill has won Premier’s Awards for poetry, non-fiction and the essay. His most recent poetry books are Grass Hut Work and Naked Clay: Drawing from Lucian Freud, which was shortlisted for the 2013 UK Forward Prize. He was poetry editor for the Australian from 1999–2009.

  Andy Jackson has featured at literary events and arts festivals in Australia, India, USA and Ireland, and lives in Castlemaine. His most recent collection, Music our bodies can’t hold (Hunter Publishers, 2017), consists of portrait poems of other people with Marfan Syndrome.

  Clive James is the author or more than thirty books. As well as his three volumes of autobiography, he has published collections of literary and television criticism, essays, travel writing, verse and novels. His latest poetry collection is Nerfertiti in the Flak Tower (Pan Macmillan, 2012).

  Carol Jenkins lives in Sydney. She has published two collections of poetry Fishing in the Devonian and X to the N and an illustrated episodic novel Select Episodes from the Mr Farmhand Series, all from Puncher and Wattmann.

  A. Frances Johnson is an award-winning poet, novelist and painter. In 2015 she won the Jospephine Ulrick Poetry Prize. She is a 2017 recipient of the Australia Council writing residency to Rome. Her third book of poetry, Rendition for Harp and Kalashnikov is forthcoming with Puncher and Wattmann (2017).

  Jill Jones’s most recent books include Breaking the Days, shortlisted for the 2017 Kenneth Slessor Award, The Beautiful Anxiety, winner of the Victorian Premiers’ Literary Award for Poetry in 2015, and a chapbook, The Leaves Are My Sisters. She is a member of the J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice, University of Adelaide.

  Amanda Joy was born and raised in the Kimberley and Pilbara regions of Western Australia. Her first full-length book, Snake Like Charms, including ‘Almost Pause/ Pareidolia,’ was part of the UWAP Poetry series. Her poem ‘Tailings’ won the 2016 Peter Porter Poetry Prize. She is the author of two chapbooks, Not Enough to Fold and Orchid Poems.

  Carmen Leigh Keates was the winner of the 2015 Whitmore Press Manuscript Prize, leading to the publication of her critically praised first collection, Meteorites. Carmen was awarded her PhD in writing from UQ and has received support from Arts QLD and the Australia Council for the Arts.

  Antigone Kefala is a poet and prose writer. Born in Romania of Greek parents, Antigone arrived in Sydney via Greece and New Zealand. She has published several collections of poetry and prose including Absence (Hale & Iremonger, 1992), Fragments (Giramondo Publishing, 2016) and Sydney Journals (Giramondo Publishing, 2008).

  John Kinsella has published many volumes of poetry, most recently On the Outskirts (UQP, 2017). He is professor of literature and environment at Curtin University, and a fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge University.

  Louis Klee is a writer who lives on Wurundjeri country. He won the Peter Porter Prize in 2017.

  Mike Ladd lives and writes in Adelaide. He ran Poetica on ABC Radio National for two decades and currently makes radio documentaries for RN. His most recent collection of poetry and prose is Invisible Mending, published by Wakefield Press in 2016.

  Anthony Lawrence’s 101 Poems is forthcoming from Pitt Street Poetry in 2017. His poetry has won many awards, including the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal, the NSW Premier’s Award, the Newcastle Poetry Prize and the Blake Poetry Prize. He is currently completing a book of prose poems.

  Bronwyn Lea’s books include Flight Animals (UQP), The Other Way Out (Giramondo), and The Deep North (George Braziller). She is poetry editor at Meanjin and teaches contemporary literature at the University of Queensland.

  Jeanine Leane is a Wiradjuri poet, author and academic from the Murrumbidgee River on the road to Gundagai. Her poetry has appeared in Southerly, Australian Book Review, Hecate, Contemporary Australian Poetry, Australian Poetry Journal and Overland. Jeanine teaches creative writing and aboriginal literature at the University of Melbourne.

  Emma Lew lives in Melbourne. Her New and Selected Poems will be published in 2018 by Giramondo.

  Cassie Lewis is a Melbourne poet currently living in Rochester, New York. She is the author of The Blue Decodes (Grand Parade Poets, 2016).

  Bella Li is the author of Maps, Cargo (Vagabond Press, 2013) and Argosy (Vagabond Press, 2017) – a book of poetry, photography and collage. She is a managing co-editor at Five Islands Press, as well as a recent guest editor of Cordite Poetry Review (Issue 55: Future Machines).

  Jennifer Maiden has published twenty-two poetry collections and five novels, and has won three Kenneth Slessors; two C.J. Dennis’; Victorian Prize for Literature; two the Age Poetry Books of Years; the Age Book of Year; the Christopher Brennan; ALS Gold Medal; and has been shortlisted for The Griffin Poetry Prize. Her latest collection is Appalachian Fall (Quemar Press).

  Caitlin Maling is a Western Australian poet with two books out through Fremantle Press. She is the current holder of the Marten Bequest in poetry.

  David McCooey is a prize-winning poet, critic, and editor. His latest book of poems, Star Struck, was published by UWA Publishing in 2016. He is also a musicia
n and composer. His latest album, The Double, was released as a digital download in 2017.

  Peter Minter is a poet, poetry editor and writer about poetry and poetics. He teaches at the University of Sydney.

  Marjon Mossammaparast is a poet and teacher living in Melbourne. Her poetry has appeared in a range of publications over the last decade. She is currently working on her first collection through Cordite Books.

  Philip Neilsen will have his sixth collection of poetry, Wildlife of Berlin, published in 2018 by UWAP. He is adjunct professor of creative writing at QUT and teaches poetics at the University of Queensland.

  Geoff Page is based in Canberra. He has published twenty-three collections of poetry as well as two novels, five verse novels and several other works. Among his awards is the ACU Poetry Prize for 2017. His latest books include The Best Australian Poems 2014 and 2015 (as editor), Plevna: A Verse Biography of Sir Charles Ryan (UWAP, 2016) and Hard Horizons (Pitt Street Poetry, 2017).

  Claire Potter is author of the poetry books Swallow (Five Islands Press), In Front of a Comma (Poets Union) and N’ombre (Vagabond Press). She is from Western Australia.

  Ron Pretty’s most recent book of poetry, The Left Hand Mirror, was published in 2017. A revised edition of Creating Poetry was published by Pitt Street Poetry in 2015.

  Brendan Ryan is the author of five collections of poetry. Travelling Through the Family (Hunter Publishers) was published in 2012 and was shortlisted for the 2014 Victorian Premier’s Awards. His most recent collection is Small Town Soundtrack (Hunter Publishers, 2015).

  Gig Ryan’s New and Selected Poems came out in 2011 (Giramondo; Bloodaxe U.K.). She has also written songs with Disband – Six Goodbyes (1988), Driving Past, Real Estate (1999) and Travel (2006). She was poetry editor of the Age from 1998–2016, and is a freelance reviewer.

  Tracy Ryan is a Western Australian writer who has also lived overseas in England, the USA & Ireland. Her ninth collection of poetry, The Water Bearer, is due out in 2018 (Fremantle Press), as is her fifth novel, We Are Not Most People (Transit Lounge).

  Philip Salom lives in North Melbourne and has published fourteen books of poetry and three novels. Waiting, his recent novel, was shortlisted for the 2017 Miles Franklin Award and the Victorian Premier’s Prize. His most recent poetry collection is the trilogy Alterworld.

  Jaya Savige was born in Sydney, grew up on Bribie Island, Queensland, and lives in London. He is the author of Latecomers (UQP, 2005), which won the NSW Premier’s Prize for Poetry, and Surface to Air (UQP, 2011), which was shortlisted for the Age Poetry Book of the Year and the WA Premier’s Prize for Poetry. He is poetry editor for the Australian.

  Michael Sharkey lives in Central Victoria. The author of nearly twenty collections of poetry, he earned a BA from the University of Sydney and a PhD from the University of Auckland. His poetry collections include Alive in Difficult Times (1991) and Another Fine Morning in Paradise (2012), and the collection of essays The Poetic Eye, Occassional Writings 1982–2012 (2016).

  Melinda Smith has published five books of poetry, most recently Goodbye, Cruel (Pitt Street Poetry, 2017). Her last book, Drag down to unlock or place an emergency call, won the Prime Minister’s Literary Award. She is based in the ACT and is a former poetry editor of the Canberra Times.

  Vivian Smith was born in Hobart but has lived in Sydney for many years. He has published nine collections of poetry.

  Maria Takolander’s most recent poetry book is The End of the World (Giramondo, 2014). Her poems have been widely translated and anthologised. Maria is also a prize-winning fiction writer and the author of The Double (and Other Stories) (Text, 2013). She is an associate professor at Deakin University in Geelong.

  Andrew Taylor has published eighteen books of poems plus several other books. His poetry has been published extensively in Australia and overseas, and he currently divides his time between Sydney in Wiesbaden in Germany.

  Heather Taylor Johnson is an American Australian writer living in Adelaide. Her second novel is Jean Harley was Here (UQP, 2017) and her fourth book of poetry is Meanwhile, the Oak (Five Islands Press, 2016). She is the editor of the anthology Shaping the Fractured Self: Poetry of Chronic Illness and Pain (UWAP, 2017).

  Tim Thorne won the William Baylebridge Award in 2007, the Christopher Brennan Award in 2012 and the Gwen Harwood Prize in 2014. The latest of his fifteen collections of poetry is Running Out of Entropy (Walleah Press, 2017). He inaugurated and for seventeen years directed the Tasmanian Poetry Festival.

  Mark Tredinnick, poet and essayist, is the winner of the Montreal Poetry Prize, the Cardiff Poetry Prize, and many other awards. His books of poetry include Fire Diary, Bluewren Cantos and Almost Everything I Know. Two new collections of his poetry will appear in 2018.

  Todd Turner’s first collection of poetry Woodsmoke was published by Black Pepper Publishing in 2014. The book was shortlisted for the Dame Mary Gilmore Award and the Anne Elder Award. Turner’s poems have been widely published in literary journals and newspapers such as Meanjin, Southerly, Overland and the Australian.

  John Upton was a professional dramatist for 27 years. He had written for more than twenty Australian television series, including Neighbours, and Raffey’s Rules. His political comedy Machiavelli, Machiavelli won the 1985 Australian Writers Guild’s award for Stage – Original Work. He had five stage plays produced over his career as a professional writer.

  Chris Wallace-Crabbe is the author of two-dozen books of poetry, here and overseas. Son of a journalist, he was raised to ‘be interested in everything’. His latest books are My Feet Are Hungry (Pitt Street Poets) and Afternoon in the Central Nervous System (George Braziller). Fanatically outdoorish, he has been characterised as ‘a smuggler of surprises’.

  John Watson has lived in the Blue Mountains for the past forty years. He has had published forty books, all of which he recommends without reservation. Many are small enough to be carried in the hand with a mobile device, enabling them to be read in periods of inactivity during recharging. Poetry must adapt.

  Alan Wearne retired from the University of Wollongong at the end of 2016 and now lives in Melbourne. His Grand Parade Poets has published With The Youngsters, a collection of Group Sestinas and Group Villanelles his classes composed for over eighteen years.

  Petra White’s most recent collection is Reading for a Quiet Morning (Gloria SMH, 2017).

  Jessica L. Wilkinson is the author of Marionette: A Biography of Miss Marion Davies (2012) and Suite for Percy Grainger (2014), both with Vagabond Press. She teaches creative writing at RMIT University.

  Chloe Wilson is the author of two poetry collections, The Mermaid Problem and Not Fox Nor Axe, which was shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Prize and the Judith Wright Calanthe Award. She received equal first prize in the 2016 Josephine Ulrick Poetry Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2017 Commonwealth Short Story Prize.

  Fiona Wright’s latest collection of poetry is Domestic Interior (2017). Her first collection, Knuckled, won the 2012 Dame Mary Gilmore Award; and her book of essays Small Acts of Disappearance won the 2016 Kibble Award and the Queensland Literary Award for non-fiction, and was shortlisted for the Stella Prize.

  ‘Rae Desmond Jones (1941–2017) made a big contribution to Australian poetry. Wherever necessary his lean, no nonsense verse courted the unacceptable, wore its heart on its sleeve, whilst always enjoying the associated risks. To those underrating or ignoring Rae, the loss is yours.’ —Billy Ah Lun