Jill Jones

b. Sydney, Australia  

Jill Jones won the 2003 Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize for her fourth book, Screens, Jets, Heaven: New and Selected Poems. Her fifth full length work, Broken/Open (Salt, 2005), was short-listed for The Age Book of the Year 2005 and the 2006 Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize. In 2007 she was invited to take part in the 23rd Festival International de la Poésie in Quebec, and in 2009 she took part in the Micro-Festival Poetry Series held in Prague and Brno, Czech Republic. Her work has been translated into French, Chinese, Spanish, Czech and Italian. She has collaborated with photographer Annette Willis on a number of multi-media projects. She is co-editing, with Michael Farrell, an anthology of contemporary Australian gay and lesbian poets, due for publication in late 2009. Her work has featured in recent anthologies including The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry, the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature, and The Best Australian Poetry 2008.

Her current position is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide. Before moving from Sydney to Adelaide, she worked in a number of different fields: legal publishing, journalism, government information, public policy, and arts administration, including Program Manager for the Literature Board of the Australia Council. Jill first worked with The Red Room Company in 2004, creating a poem on a pillow slip which featured again in The Red Room Company & Shaun Tan window display at The Australia Council, 372 Elizabeth Street, Sydney. Jill was jointly commissioned by The Red Room Company and the Arts Law Centre of Australia to write an original poem to launch the Arts Law Week, in 2008.  

Website: http://www.jilljones.com.au

Blog: http://rubystreet.blogspot.com  

shanti:e

 

rivers past rails/rolled

delta to sea strophes

corded weeds and shadow

 

wave keening flower plumes

on domes in extremity

lithe sextants courting limits

 

down walls and ribbon rain

colour lights/crashed bruise

salt swale and kiss

 

you held the blows thunder

spilt gulf in the main

latitudes splinter harvest

 

rock is part/under

scattered by bells

rock gain    risen    come

 

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