Jack & Mollie (& Her)
by Jordie Albiston

Jordie Albiston has published eight poetry collections and a handbook on poetic form. Two of her collections (Botany Bay Document ¾ retitled Dreaming Transportation ¾ and The Hanging of Jean Lee) have been adapted for music-theatre: both enjoyed recent seasons at the Sydney Opera House. Jordie works within formal boundaries: traditional, experimental, or self-imposed. She seeks the musical cadence while endeavouring to exact a mathematical sense of existence. Often she utilises archival sources from which to wrest a kind of documentary cataloguing; other times she refers to an internal witness of experience. Her poetics are highly charged with vertigo, and doubt. Jordie’s work has won a number of awards, including the Mary Gilmore Award and the NSW Premier’s Literary Award. in 2019, she was the recipient of The Patrick White Literary Award for her significant contribution to Australian literature. She lives in Melbourne.