Bio

Andy Jackson has performed at dozens of events and festivals (including The Age Melbourne Writers Festival, Prakriti Poetry Festival [in Chennai, India], Goa Literary & Arts Festival, Australian Poetry Festival, Queensland Poetry Festival, Newcastle Young Writers Festival and Overload Poetry Festival), had poems published in a variety of print and on-line journals, been awarded grants from the Australia Council and Arts Victoria, been the recipient of an Australian Society of Authors mentorship, and self-published two collections of poetry.  He has been awarded residencies from Victorian Writers Centre, Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers Centre (Perth) and Asialink.  He is also an infrequent collaborator with musicians, sound artists and other writers.  His most recent collection of poems, Among the Regulars,was published by papertiger media in 2010 – this book was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Prize for Poetry (the Kenneth Slessor Prize) and Highly Commended in the Anne Elder Award.  A collaborative puppetry-poetry performance with Rachael Wenona Guy entitled Ambiguous Mirrors won the City of Yarra Award for Most Innovative Work at the Overload Poetry Festival in 2009.  He won the 2008 Arts ACT Rosemary Dobson Award for Best Unpublished Poem for Secessionist.  Andy has the genetic condition Marfan Syndrome.  He is currently based in Melbourne.  Later this year, with thanks to funding from Copyright Agency, he will attend the Summer Program at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, Boulder, Colorado USA.

~

QUOTES

This is a poetry in which seemingly contradictory attributes are embodied. Lyric beauty combines with an unflinching gaze, self-assuredness with vulnerability, awareness of minute bodily gesture with existentialist questionings… ‘Among the Regulars’ is a distinctive, impressive and thought-provoking collection. By asking the reader to step into the body of another, it challenges us to consider the impact of assumptions of ‘normality’ on the individual. Ultimately though, it is the presence of Jackson himself breathing through the lines which makes this such a moving work.

- Debbie Lim, Mascara Literary Review

As director of the festival, all poets are my favourite children, but a special mention needs to go to Andy Jackson who along with Genevieve and her trusty harp Jezebel, and David Splatt on saw, absolutely knocked the socks off the punters at the Edinburgh Castle. Coburg never sounded so good.

- Luis Gonzales Serrano, Director, Overload Poetry Festival

Heartbreaking but controlled… parables, hymns and moving observations of relationships between people and then between the poet and himself or him-selves…  Poem upon poem, the reader is confronted by the political and private (one is the other, here), then forcefully invited to take notice of those things from which we often shy away.  It combines passion, originality and a control of form. He eloquently, emotionally tells his own story while never letting these strong emotions override the poetry – he is in total control of his matter. It is an intelligent but accessible collection.

- Judges, NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, 2011

A polished and assured collection, so radiant with insight and sureness of touch that it’s impossible to remain unmoved. Andy Jackson has the uncanny knack of seeing humanity, like a burning filament, underneath what appears at first mundane. His poems, like beautifully shaped pieces of music, change melody and cadence but always resonate, coming to us out of pools of silence to show us the pathos in difficult conversations, late night drinks with friends, sexuality, grief, and an extraordinarily acute awareness of physicality and mortality. They’re poems that disarm you with their gentleness while refusing to flinch from what’s there.

- Cate Kennedy