Jordie Albiston lives in Melbourne. She is the author of seven poetry collections, and works as an editor, manuscript assessor, proofreader and mentor. Sydney composer Andrée Greenwell has adapted two of her books (Botany Bay Document – retitled Dreaming Transportation – and The Hanging of Jean Lee) for music-theatre: both enjoyed recent seasons at the Sydney Opera House.
Jordie’s first collection Nervous Arcs won the Mary Gilmore Award, received runner-up for the Anne Elder Award, and was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Prize. Jordie’s fourth collection, The Fall, was shortlisted for Premier’s Prizes in Victoria, NSW and Queensland.
Jordie Albiston 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 sixth book, the sonnet according to ‘m’, won the 2010 NSW Premier’s Prize. Her most recent book is the Book of Ethel, published by Puncher & Wattmann.
