Welcome

Hi, my name is Alys Jackson and I'm an author and poet

based in Adelaide, South Australia.

My work has been published in books, magazines,

anthologies and online.

Summer Stung and Amazon

Published in Kaleidoscope, February, 2021. 

There’s something for everyone in, Kaleidoscope, an exciting and vibrant selection of the best work of many of Adelaide’s finest poets. Arts SA calls Friendly Street Poets “The longest running live poetry and publishing organisation in the southern hemisphere”.


Winston

Published in Griffith Review 68, Getting On, May, 2020.

Since 2003, Griffith Review has been the leading literary magazine in Australia with an uncanny ability to anticipate emerging trends.’


Deleted Words and Dragonflies

Published in InDaily, March 18, 2020.


Well Versed 2: Anthology 2020 Audiobook Launch

Poetry selected for publication. Launched February, 2020.


New Poets 20

Alys Jackson’s debut collection of poems Wolf Ghosts was published in New Poets 20 alongside Julia Wakefield Houghton and Sharon Foulkes. Published by Friendly Street Poets. Edited by Steve Evans. Launched in November 2019.


Ideas

Published in The Mozzie, Volume 26, Issue 8 September 2018.


Bushfire Brumby

Awarded 2nd Prize in the Henry Lawson Festival of Arts, June 2018. Published in the Verse and Short Story Anthology, 2018.

Bushfire Brumby


Statue of Mercury in the Uffizi

Published in Underground Writers, Issue 21, February 2018


Tilted Winter

Published in The Wild Word, January 2018

‘We are an online arts/culture/politics magazine that loves creative people.’

Muted

Published in Social Alternatives, Volume 36: 4 : 2017

social alternatives


Drought

Awarded Grenfell Henry Lawson Statuette for Prose, June 2017

This poem has both the grandeur and delicacy of an almost neoclassical, Augustan elegance – the verse is regular, well-paced and its perspective is both judicious and minutely insightful. It escapes both Romantic affect and ballad simplification. It’s a poem that “thinks” more than “feels”. This is wise, meditative, compelling poetry.’ David Gilbey, President of Booranga Writer’s Centre and author of Pachinko sunset (Island Press, 2016).


Polite Racism

Published in Right Now, June 2017


To Drift in Sandstone Folds

Published in The Mozzie, Vol 25, Issue 4, June 2017

To Drift in Sandstone Folds reprinted below:

To Drift in Sandstone Folds

Soft-footed shadows creep in fossil shades.

Beneath the cliffs of Gariwerd the evening

Chill exhales in fractured, weathered glades.

Folded, tilted memories. Exposed and turning.

Our history shelved in countless volumes, etched

On rock – bound in earth. Sandstone pages

Cradling species crouched below cracked skin –

Chronicles of a planet’s fading ages.

Our past – where rock-kissed bones dance deep within.

Primordial oceans swell beneath our feet,

Burst in wind-split waves, and I am cast

In valleys where the past and present speak.

Of all the species will ours be the last?

Within still depths still jawless creatures leap –

Mineral shoals whose broken bodies turn,

And twist within their geologic tombs.

Deeper, Earth’s indifferent furnace burns,

And mountains writhe and rise in molten wombs.

Perhaps someday in death we too may rise,

Borne upon the backs of mountains. Raised,

To drift in sandstone folds.

Immortalized.

Phineas McGonagall

Published in the Grenfell Henry Lawson Anthology of Short Stories and Poetry, 2009. Phineas McGonagall received First Prize in the category, humorous verse.

Children’s and Humorous Verse:

A Trouble Shared

Published in Caterpillar Magazine,  (Ireland) summer edition, 2019 

You Can Lead a Horse to Water

Published in Caterpillar Magazine,  (Ireland) winter edition, 2017/2018

Red Sky at Night

Published in Caterpillar Magazine (Ireland), winter edition, 2017/2018

The River Goes to Sleep

Published on the Australian Children’s Poetry website, June 2017

The River Goes to Sleep reprinted below:

The River Goes to Sleep

Ripples leave their

Imprints on a soft and sandy rise,

Vines are dipping fingers while the

Evening winks her eyes;

Resting crimson ribbons round the river’s dusty sides

Bunny Psychosis

Published in the 2009 Grenfell Henry Lawson Festival of Arts Poetry Anthology

 

 

© Alys Jackson 2018