Isabella G. Mead is a poet from Melbourne, Australia. Her debut poetry collection, The Infant Vine, is published by UWAP.
Her work has also appeared in Meanjin, Island, Rabbit, Westerly, Cordite Poetry Review, Going Down Swinging, Plumwood Mountain Journal, foam:e and Blue Dog: Australian Poetry. In 2023, she was shortlisted for the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize.
The Infant Vine (2024)
Lyrical and narrative-driven with playful and fantastical elements woven throughout, the poems in The Infant Vine reflect on how ordinary moments become charged with significance and strangeness when disaster strikes. Such moments make imaginary worlds possible: sleep deprivation transfigures a new mother into a leafy seadragon; a novel virus gives women the power to reproduce via parthenogenesis like the eponymous bonnethead shark.
Themes of transformation, metamorphosis and preservation—of life, of memory and the environment—permeate Isabella G. Mead’s debut collection. This is a rich and compelling exploration on caregiving and creativity in the context of global crises.
Poetry
'Reflections on a Waiting Room Lithograph' – Cordite Poetry Review, Issue 112: Treat, 2024 | 'Parturition Chairs I-V' – Island (Online), 2024 | ‘I Cutlass Spent Days With an X' – Cordite Poetry Review, Issue 111: Baby, 2024 | 'Ode to a BabyCentre Forum' – Rabbit, Issue 38: Archive, 2023 | 'Fool at Perigee' – Going Down Swinging, Hell & High Water, 2023 | 'Megafauna' – Westerly 68.1, 2023 | 'The Transfer' – Poetry of Home: The Liquid Amber Prize Anthology, 2023 | 'Two Cities' – Poetry of Home: The Liquid Amber Prize Anthology, 2023 | 'Visions' – Plumwood Mountain Journal, Vol.10, No.01, 2023 | 'The Salience Network [Street Scenes, Heidelberg]' – Cordite Poetry Review, No Theme 12, 2023 | 'Night Notes' – Island, Issue 167, 2023 | 'The Human Body' – Island, Issue 167, 2023 | 'Screensaver' – foam:e, Issue 20, 2023 | 'On googling saint olivia palermo [images]’ – Rabbit, Issue 36: Art, 2022 | 'The Green Wedge' – Island, Issue 166, 2022 | 'Personal Slalom' – Meanjin, Spring Issue, 2022 | 'The Cholmondeley Ladies' – Rabbit, Issue 26: Belonging, 2018 | 'The Bee' – Going Down Swinging, No. 38, 2017 | 'Final hours, Sputnik 2' – Cordite Poetry Review, 2017
Earlier publications appear in Going Down Swinging, No. 30 (2010), Blue Dog Australian Poetry, Vol.9 No.18 (2010), Visible Ink 22 (2010) and Nth Degree: New Australian Writing (2010)
Awards
2023 — Longlisted in the University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor's International Poetry Prize 2023 for the poems 'What to Forget When You're Expecting' and 'The Wing' | 2023 — Second place in the 2023 Liquid Amber Press Poetry Prize for 'The Transfer' | 2023 — Shortlisted for the 2023 Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize for the poems 'Night Notes' and 'The Human Body' | 2023 — Longlisted for the SCWC 2023 Poetry Award for the poem 'Dinnertime' | 2023 — Longlisted for the 2023 Peter Porter Poetry Prize for the poem 'Bonnethead' | 2022 — Winner in two categories of the Queensland Regional Arts Awards (QRAA) Ekphrasis Challenge | 2017 — Shortlisted for the 2017 Nillumbik Ekphrasis Poetry Prize | 2010 — Highly commended in the 2010 Poetronica Awards for the online poem/artwork, ‘For I Will Fly to You’ (commissioned by Experimenta)