Jordie Albiston

Jordie Albiston
Jordie Albiston c.2010

Born (1961-09-30) 30 September 1961
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Nationality Australian
Alma mater Victorian College of the Arts
La Trobe University

Jordie Albiston (born 30 September 1961) is a contemporary Australian poet and academic.

Jordie Albiston c.1970

Jordie Albiston grew up in Melbourne, one of three or four children. She studied flute at the Victorian College of the Arts before completing a PhD in Literature. Her first collection of poems, Nervous Arcs, won the Mary Gilmore Award, received runner-up in the Anne Elder Award, and was shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Prize. Her next two books were documentary collections, respectively concerning the first European women in the Port Jackson and Botany Bay settlements, and Jean Lee, the last woman hanged in Australia (1951).

Botany Bay Document was later transformed into a performance work entitled Dreaming Transportation by Andrée Greenwell.[1] In 2003, the performance premiered at the Sydney Festival, and in 2004 was staged again at the Sydney Opera House featuring Deborah Conway. The CD of this work won the Grand Prix Marulic (Croatia).

In 2006, Jordie Albiston's biographical verse The Hanging of Jean Lee was used as the text for an opera created by Andrée Greenwell. Featuring Max Sharam, it was first staged at the Sydney Opera House, The Studio.[2] The libretto of this work was subsequently shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Prize for Best Music-Theatre Script, and the opera was remounted in Melbourne in 2013. It is available on CD.

Albiston's fourth book, The Fall, a collection of chained verse, was shortlisted for Premier's Prizes in Victoria, NSW, and Queensland. This was followed by Vertigo: a cantata, which utilises musical structures and devices in place of traditional organisational techniques and punctuation. Albiston's sixth collection, the sonnet according to 'm', won the 2010 NSW Premier's Prize, and received runner-up in the Chief Minister's Award (ACT). kindness is a hand-bound limited edition artist's book, with etchings by Sheree Kinlyside in response to one poem. the Book of Ethel consists of 'perfect square' syllabic rhymed stanzas, charting the life of Albiston's Cornish great grandmother, and XIII Poems brings together uncollected poems (many commissioned) written between 2009 and 2013. Jack & Mollie (& Her) is a book-length poem comprising decasyllabic cinquains. Albiston has (or had) dogs with these names (ABC RN Poetica "A Pod of Poets"), so it is likely the narrative is at least partly autobiographical.

Jordie Albiston's work has been well represented in anthologies, including the Oxford Anthology of Australian Verse (1998), the Indigo Book of Modern Australian Sonnets (2003), the PEN Macquarie Anthology of Australian Literature (2009), the Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry (2009), the Puncher & Wattmann Anthology of Australian Poetry (2009), Motherlode: Australian Women's Poetry 1986-2008 (2009), Australian Poetry Since 1788 (2011), and The turnrow Anthology of Contemporary Australian Poetry (USA: 2014). She has an entry in Who's Who in Twentieth-Century World Poetry, and is mentioned in The Cambridge Companion to Australian Literature and The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry & Poetics (4th ed.). She is referred to as a major Australian poet in Australian Book Review (May 2016).

Other composers having set Albiston's poetry to music include Leonard Lehrman (New York), Barry McKimm (Melbourne), Raffaele Marcellino (Sydney) and Peter Skoggard (Canada). Albiston was selected by The Age (Melbourne Magazine) for its annual Top 100 in 2010, and is currently featured on the ABC Radio National podcast "A Pod of Poets". In 2014, she addressed the prestigious Sydney Institute.

Jordie Albiston cannot be found on Facebook, Twitter, or other social networking sites.

Awards and nominations

Bibliography

Poetry

Editor

Notes

References

External links

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