Common Wealth: Contributor Notes

Guest Poetry Editor: Claire Gaskin

Claire was born in Melbourne in 1966. A Snail in the Ear of the Buddha was published by SOUP Publications in 1998. Claire completed a second collection, Bridges and Verandahs, with the assistance of a grant from the Literature Board of the Australia Council for 2003. She currently teaches the Certificate Four in Professional Writing and Editing at MACE in Mansfield.

Aileen Kelly grew up in England and now lives in Melbourne where she is an adult educator. Her poetry is widely published in Australia and elsewhere. Her first book won the Mary Gilmore Award and the Vincent Buckley Prize. Latest book: City and Stranger (Five Islands Press).

Amanda le Bas de Plumetot

Amanda’s stories have appeared in Verandah, Page Seventeen, pendulum, Tamba and Going Down Swinging and recieved prizes in literary competitions including the Eastern Regional Libraries, The Glen Eira and the Yakkerboo. Her poems have appeared in The Mozzie, Phaedra, Woorilla and Best Australian Poems 2005.

Andrew Leggett

Andrew Leggett works as a psychiatrist and psychoanalytic psychotherapist in Brisbane. His first collection Old Time Religion and Other Poems was published by Interactive Press in 1998. His poetry has been widely published in journals and newspapers throughout Australia and internationally, including The Australian, The Bulletin, Overland, Westerly, Quadrant, LiNQ, Imago, Antipodes (USA), Iron (UK), Poetry Nottingham (UK), Poetry Manchester (UK), Iron (UK) and numerous others.

Ban’ya Natsuishi

Ban’ya Natsuishi is the editor of the international haiku quarterly Ginyu and a co-founder of the World Haiku Association. He teaches at Meiji University, Japan.

Carol Jenkins

Carol Jenkins lives in Sydney and is currently writing a biographical note on the easy installment plan. So far small parts of it have appeared in Snorkel, Quadrant, Heat, Conversations, Tirra Lirra, Island and Overland.

Carolyn van Langenberg

Carolyn van Langenberg is the author of the fish lips trilogy — fish lips, the teetotaller’s wake and blue moon (Indra Publishing 2001, 2003 and 2004). See Zora Simic’s review on the API Network.

Charles Frederickson

Dr. Charles Frederickson is a Swedish-American Pragmatic Idealist, Daring Experimentalist and Restless Nomad who has wandered intrepidly through 206 countries, an original sketch and poem for each presented here. Spreading revitalized roots and wings in Thailand, he has devoted the past year to volunteer tsunami relief and providing child-focused comforting support. 90+ publications on 5 continents.

Chris Brown

Christopher Brown lives in Newcastle NSW. His work has been published in a number of online journals.

Chris Pusateri

Chris Pusateri is the author of Berserker Alphabetics (available here) and the chapbook VI Fictions (Gong, 2006). His poetry and prose have recently appeared or are forthcoming in The Poker, Verse, The New Review of Literature, and The Poetry Project Newsletter. He lives in Lafayette, Colorado.

Diane Fahey

Diane Fahey has published and read her poems internationally, won numerous awards, and received grants from the Australia Council, VicArts and ArtsSA. Her seventh book of poetry is The Sixth Swan, with Sea Wall and River Light forthcoming from Five Islands Press in late 2006.

Fiona Wright

Fiona Wright has recently discovered that her grandmother’s family were among the original settlers of the Hunter Valley, and really did ride horses, barefoot, five miles to school. She’s a poet from Sydney, whose work has been published in a variety of journals and anthologies, including vanguard, Voiceworks and Hermes, and was selected for the Red Room Company’s 2004 Toilet Doors Project. She has edited several university and online publications, and currently works for the Red Room Company.

Grant Caldwell

Grant Caldwell has had seven books published, five of poetry. His work has been published widely in Australia, as well as in Ireland, U.S.A., Canada, India, Italy, Colombia, Japan and Germany. His 1996 collection of poetry, “You Know What I Mean” (Hale & Iremonger) was nominated for the Age Book of the Year Award. His latest book is the poetry collection “Dreaming of Robert De Niro” (Five Islands Press, 2003). He was awarded Australia Council for the Arts Fellowships A and B in 1994 and 1992, respectively, as well as Arts Victoria Awards in 1993 and 1994. He teaches creative writing at the School of Creative Arts, University of Melbourne.

Iain Britton

Iain Britton was born and educated in Palmerston North, New Zealand, with long spells living in the UK, returning to a rural lifestyle in a small Maori community on the East Coast of the North Island. His poetry is published internationally in such magazines as Jacket, Slope, Magma, Orbis, The Reader, Harvard Review, The Argotist, Rattapallax, Sentinel Poetry, The Wolf Magazine. He has read several times in London during a winter’s visit in 2002/2003 and is now Director of Maori Studies at a large independent boys’ school in Auckland.

Jeff Crouch

Jeff Crouch is a writer in Grand Prairie, Texas. He plays at art as though it were a game of hide and go seek. His writing has appeared in Above Ground Testing, Canopic Jar, The Cerebral Catalyst, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, The Dream People, Lunatic Chameleon, My Favorite Bullet, saucy vox, semantikon, Subterranean Quarterly, Underground Window, Venue–A Southern Forum, Static Movement, The Rose and Thorn, and Wire Sandwich with more forthcoming in Laika Poetry Review, Unlikely Stories and Spent Meat.

John Jenkins

John Jenkins is a poet and journalist. He has written, co-written or edited more than 17 books. He is the winner of the 2003 National Shoalhaven/Artsrush Prize for Poetry, and his verse novel, A Break in the Weather was short-listed for the 2004 FAW Christina Stead Award for Fiction. His most recent collection of poems is Dark River, (Five Islands, 2003), was the subject of an ABC Radio National �Poetica’, which went to air last June. His long dramatic poem Under the Shaded Blossom, which won the 2004 James Joyce Foundation Suspended Sentence Award, was recently adapted for Radio National’s �Airplay’ series. John’s most recent non-fiction title is Travelers’ Tales of Old Cuba (Ocean Press, 2002). John lives in Kangaroo Ground near Victoria’s Yarra Valley, where he is a keen horse rider and wine sampler, and he teaches writing subjects at university and TAFE level In 2005, he completed a new manuscript, Growing Up With Mr Menzies, under an Arts Victoria writing grant.

John McBain

John was born in Adelaide in 1952 and raised on the family farm “Crower” at Lucindale. In 1957 they moved to a farm at Boyup Brook. He attended Scotch College from 65 to 69, did a Commerce Degree at UWA and then worked for Esso Australia.After a year he moved to Nannup and commenced organic/ biodynamic farming. In 87 he bought a farm near Margaret River and became a community conservation activist, an environmental retailer and even sold real estate. He spoke at the UN in New York and went to the 92 Rio Earth Summit. On returning to WA from a 2 year trip filming and photographing in SA, Vic and the NT, John started writing poetry as a creative outlet having hocked all of his cameras along the way. In his spare time he is a community sustainability consultant, environmental designer, an urban agriculturalist and an alcoholarian.

KC Wilder

KC writes: “I have previously authored 5 books of poetry. My work has seen ink in many literary journals and magazines worldwide, including in 2005, The Seattle Review, Poetry New Zealand, Soma Literary Review, Auckland Poetry Review, and dozens of others. Parts of my latest book appear on the website www.fauxbrow.com. Some of the poems here are excerpts from an as yet unpublished, 170-page manuscript which is the seminal work of a radically new way of seeing and experiencing, an esthetic I call “faux-brow.”"

Kevin Brophy

Kevin Brophy teaches in the School of Creative Arts at the University of Melbourne.

Kris Hemensley

Kris Hemensley has been on the Melbourne scene for about 40 years as a performing and publishing poet. He coordinates the “poetry & ideas” bookshop, Collected Works. He’s published twenty or so books & booklets since 1967, and has a collection in the works from Salt (UK). He was the 2005 recipient of the Christopher Brennan Award.

Les Wicks

Les Wicks lives in Sydney.

Lisa Jacobson

Lisa Jacobson is completing a verse novel, The Sunlit Zone, as a PhD at La Trobe University. Her first book of poetry, Hair & Skin & Teeth, was published by Five Islands Press in 1995.

Mal McKimmie

Mal McKimmie is a Melbourne-based poet originally from WA. His poems have appeared in many Australian literary journals over the last 15 years or so; his collection ‘Poetileptic’ was published by Five Islands Press in August 2005, and launched in both Perth and Melbourne. Poetileptic will be featured on Poetica, on Radio National, in September 2006.

Matt Hetherington

Matt Hetherington lives in Melbourne.

Mark Heseltine

Originally from Hobart, Mark Heseltine is a photographer who lives Cardiff, Wales.

Michael Farrell

Michael Farrell lives in Melbourne.

Nicola Scholes

Nicola Scholes was born in England in 1975 and came to Australia in 1986. She holds a first-class Honours degree in English from The University of Queensland (1997), a Graduate Diploma in Library and Information Studies from QUT (2000), and a Master of Arts in Writing and Literature from Deakin University (2005). Her writing has appeared in dotlit, The Australian Library Journal, inCite and National Outlook. She acts in Brisbane community theatres, and is hoping to have her children’s picture book manuscript, Horrible Onions and Scary Crocodiles published soon!

Papa Osmubal

Papa Osmubal writes from Macao, South China. He is currently completing his MA in English Studies at the University of Macau. His works, both visual and literary, have found home in various places, hardcopy and online, more recently in Pemmican Press, Chick Flicks, Literary Chaos (Lit K-Os), Admit 2, foam:e, The Drunken Boat, Spillway Review, Tamafyhr Mountain Poetry Irregular, Burning Leaf, The Green Silk Journal, Poor Mojo’s Almanac(k) and Rattle.

Paul Mitchell

Paul Mitchell is a Melbourne poet. He has published one collection, Minorphysics (IP 2003), and has another due out in April 2007 through Five Islands Press. Visit his website.

Rebekah Moon

Rebekah Moon is a 27 year old Arts graduate, now studying education. She lives with her husband and two cats on the edges of suburbia and a National Park.

Sebastian Gurciullo

Sebastian Gurciullo has been co-editor of and contributor to textbase since its inception in 1998. His most recent publications include Marginal Text through textbase publications (2004) and concrete pieces in Unusual Work No.2 (2005). He works as a curator of online exhibitions at Public Record Office Victoria, where he is also editor of Provenance: The Journal of Public Record Office Victoria.

Shannan Rodda

Shannan Rodda lives on the Mornington Peninsula. She is currently studying Professional Writing and Editing at Tafe and is currently working on her first novel.

Simon West

Simon West is a poet and teacher in Italian Studies. He lives in Melbourne. His first collection, First Names, will be published by Puncher and Wattmann in September.

Terry Collet

Terry Collet and lives in England and writes: “… nationality does not matter in this instance for all poets are international at heart.”

Todd Swift

Todd Swift edits nthposition.

�zeyir Lokman �ayci

�zeyir Lokman �ayci remains something of a mystery.

Vernyce Dannells

Vernyce Dannells lives and writes on Maui. Her work has appeared in numerous international literary magazines. Cadenza Press published a chapbook, Temporarily Abated, in spring 2006.

Victoria Ramsay

Victoria Ramsay is originally from Sydney and currently lives and writes in London, UK.