Ruby Street

I am pleased and gratified that my most recent book, Viva the Real (UQP), has been shortlisted in the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards for 2019 . Awards and prizes aren’t obviously the be-all and end-all but they do repay some of the faith the writer (in this case, me) and publisher had in the book. It's a welcome thing, especially as a genre like poetry pretty much gets ignored by book reviewing culture, literary festivals, and the like. The judges say of the book : Viva the Real by Jill Jones is an heroic celebration of the everyday: … For Jones the poem is an artefact freeze-framing thought: she is interested in the connections between the quotidian, attentiveness, and the resourcefulness of the poem to make legible our familiar. … An antidote to distraction, Viva the Real is a marvellous contribution to the poetics of everyday life: it magnifies the moment and resonates long after reading. A couple of years ago on this blog, I posted some thoughts I had about what my...

I think nearly all my most recent writing has something to do with how ‘the local’, gender and intimacy intersect in a kind of ecopoetics. That ‘something’, of course, can take many different forms, however, at least in my mind, remains connected to those ideas, even if tenuously. I’m not exactly sure what a suburban queer ecopoetics might look like, in general, but to my mind, it’s what I’m doing in my own way. In other words, how apparently mundane locations of ecological shifting and climate change/breakdown can figure in a poetry that recollects or reimagines embodied (human and non-human) locatedness and intimacy. If that doesn’t sound too stodgy. It was certainly what I had in mind with my most recent book, last year’s Viva the Real (UQP 2018), as well as in my previous book, Brink (Five Islands Press 2017). And it is what I’ve tried to work through, making the personal even more personal as well as historical (more on this later), in a new manuscript that’s in deve...

Announcing the February Melbourne launch of the ground-breaking anthology, Out of the Box: Contemporary Australian Gay and Lesbian Poets , edited by Michael Farrell and Jill Jones ( Puncher and Wattmann ). To be launched by Christos Tsiolkas and Kathleen Fallon Tuesday 2nd Feb, 7pm Hares & Hyenas 63 Johnston St, Fitzroy Readers at the launch include: Javant Biarujia, Bel Schenk, Maria Zajkowski, Terry Jaensch, Peter Rose, Michael Farrell, Jill Jones and, we hope, Susan Hawthorne. The event is part of Midsumma , Melbourne's annual gay and lesbian festival. Other poets in the anthology include David Malouf, Dorothy Porter, Pam Brown, Chris Edwards, Lee Cataldi, Martin Harrison, joanne burns, Scott-Patrick Mitchell, Tricia Dearborn, Kate Lilley, and many others. Out of the Box is the first contemporary Australian gay and lesbian poetry anthology. These are poems of the 21st century: sexy, sassy, innovative, and real. Read an interview about the anthology with Michael and me, by ...

Out of the Box: Contemporary Gay and Lesbian Poets is celebrating with its second launch, this time offshore. If you are in Singapore, come along to: Books Actually Tuesday December 15, 7.30-9.30pm There will be readings by Michael Farrell (co-editor) and guest reader, Cyril Wong. *** And watch this space for more details of launches in Melbourne (2 Feb) and Sydney (26 Feb).

'Out of the Box: Contemporary Australian Gay and Lesbian Poets', edited by Michael Farrell and Jill Jones ( Puncher and Wattmann ). To be launched by Professor Susan Sheridan at Feast Festival Saturday 21 November, 11am at Saldechin, 21 King William Street, Adelaide. Readers at the launch include Michael Farrell, Jill Jones and Peter Rose. Poets in the anthology include David Malouf, Dorothy Porter, Peter Rose, Pam Brown, Chris Edwards, Lee Cataldi, Martin Harrison, joanne burns, Bel Schenk, Terry Jaensch, Scott-Patrick Mitchell, Tricia Dearborn, Javant Biarujia, Kate Lilley, and many many others. "Out of the Box is poised at the junction of the poetic moment and the queer moment in contemporary Australia – a doubly-rich rubric for reading the wonderful poems here. The collection poses complex interconnections between poetics, politics and identity: just one measure of its great achievement." - Elizabeth McMahon "These writers are amongst the best of Australian p...