Resume

Melinda Smith has been writing poetry for publication since 1996. She has published three collections with Ginninderra Press: Pushing thirty, wearing seventeen (June 2001), Mapless in Underland (July 2004), and First… Then… (April 2012). She has also been published in a wide range of magazines and anthologies, both in Australia and internationally, and has had her work broadcast, set to music and plastered across the back of a bus (but not all at the same time).

She writes in many different traditional forms, and in free verse, in a pithy and accessible style. Her poems are often darkly comic and frequently pack an emotional punch. It is her firm belief that if a poem cannot speak to a person of ordinary intelligence without the help of a literature academic, the poet is not doing a proper job.

She lives in Canberra, Australia with her partner of seventeen years and their two small sons.  Contact details supplied on request.

Publications
Books

• First… Then…, Ginninderra Press, April 2012. See also http://www.circlequirk.wordpress.com

Growing out of a project funded by ArtsACT involving Facebook, Twitter and a dedicated blog, this chapbook of 24 poems about autism is by turns harrowing, uplifting, heartbreaking, fascinating and hilarious. You do not have to know or be a person with autism to enjoy this book; it will engage any reader who is interested in the human condition.

• Mapless in Underland, Ginninderra Press, July 2004.

“[T]he work of a poet who…deals directly with life as it is. She takes the reader on journeys into the past, through childhood, and across relationships. Humour is lightly relied upon to arouse a sense of memory, [for example] in ‘Wheels’ where ‘at sixteen, humans grow a car / and never leave the road again’. Her poems have a tenderness of expression and … use the transforming power of imagery to connect with her readers: ‘The trees are trying to forget / but their bones are black with remembering’.”

- Geoff Page, highly commending ‘Mapless in Underland’ in the ACT Writing and Publishing Awards 2005

• Pushing thirty, wearing seventeen, Ginninderra Press, June 2001.

“Pushing thirty, wearing seventeen created a deep reflective space in me that I was reluctant to fill with words…[t]his fascinating anthology simultaneously stimulates stillness and a quality of unsettled friction.”

- Liz Darville, Voice, No. 1 March 2002

Individual Poems

• “Song of the anti-depressant” and “Discretion” included in Ten Years of Poetry in Quadrant, anthology edited by Les Murray
• “Murder at the poetry conference” published in the Canberra Times, Saturday 26 Feb 2011 and in Best Australian Poems 2011, (Black Inc.) edited by John Tranter.
• “A birth” selected to be printed on free postcards and distributed throughout Australia in September 2010 as part of the national ‘Get Reading!’ promotion.
• “autistic child with acute auditory processing disorder” featured on the Australian Poetry Centre website as ‘poem of the month’ for June 2010; published in Quadrant, Jan 2010 -Feb 2011
• “Song of the anti-depressant” published in Quadrant, Jan 2010 -Feb 2011
• “Addiction Song”, “Herakles’ Other Labour”, and “Beach cricket with four-year-old”, “Last Orders”, Quadrant, November 2009
• “Self-sufficiency” and “Falling“, Blue Dog, July 2009
• “Autistic Acrostic“, Quadrant, Vol LIII, No.4,  April 2009
• “Hot continent“, The Canberra Times, 21 March 2009
• “Eddy”, Antipodes, June 2008
• “What am I?” selected for ‘Poetry in Action‘ project (displayed on buses in the ACT during 2007-2008)
• “Given“, Swings and Roundabouts (Anthology by Random House NZ), May 2008.
• “e-happy”, Canberra Times, November 2007.
• “North Wind Nightmares” – Quadrant June 2007 – Volume LI Number 6
• “Laura to Petrarch”, “untitled“, “Mulch” and “Discretion”‘ – Quadrant November 2006 – Volume L Number 11
• “No Bed“, Quadrant July-August 2006 – Volume L Number 7-8
• “No Bed“, in Les Murray (ed.) Best Australian Poems 2005 (Black Inc. 2005)
• “Bride and best man discuss arrangements” in The Perfect Diary 2005 (Big Stick Productions 2004)
• “Mother Love” set to music by singer / songwriter Frances Paterson; recorded on CD ‘Conversations’ released as part of the Goulburn Regional Gallery exhibition of the same name.
• “Waiting for the sun” set to music by choral composer Sandra Milliken (SULASOL music publishers, Finland, S933 2004)
• “Infidelity” (later renamed “Bride and Best Man discuss arrangements“), Sharing a Landscape: a celebration of difference, anthology edited and published by Society of Women Writers NSW Inc., 2004

“Melinda Smith captures the danger and desire of an illicit relationship ‘with sidelong ripple-whispers and the light but tidal tug of Truth or Dare’. Dream world, real world…the poem’s rhymes flow from line to line as seamlessly as wavelets on a sandy shore.”

- Susan Steggall, Introduction to Sharing a Landscape: a celebration of difference, p.5

Performances

• “autistic child with acute auditory processing disorder”, performed at Wheeler Centre for Books, writing and Ideas, Melbourne, Vic., 7 May 2010 at Australian Poetry Centre ’Dreaming in AUsLAN’ event
• Guest on Radio 2XX Canberra October 2009 –  read “No Bed”
• Poetry at the Gods invitational reading, Canberra, 11 August 2009.
• Mount Majura Wines ‘Poetry in the Vines’ invitational reading, 14 June 2009.
• Poetry at the Gods invitational reading, Canberra, August 2007.
• Ginninderra Press 10^th Birthday Celebration, 2 July 2006
• “Waiting for the Sun” performed as a choral piece (music by Sandra Milliken), Brisbane, May 2004
• Guest on Radio 2XX Canberra 2004 – discussed Mapless in Underland (Ginninderra Press, 2004) and read several poems
• National The Words and Music radio programme hosted by Chas Eales for the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia, 2005 (“Bright side”, “Trio”, “Not writing”, “Red velvet afternoon” and “A simple twist”)
• Canberra Festival of Contemporary Arts Political Performance Poetry, 2 October 2001.
• ABC Radio 2CN 666, Poetry Week Special Broadcasts 1998 (“Legends”)

Prizes

• Winner, Australian Poetry Centre  ‘Making sense of it’ National Poetry Competition, May 2010 (“autistic child with acute auditory processing disorder”).
• Winner, 2006 David Campbell Prize for best unpublished poem by an ACT poet (“Given“).
• Shortlisted for the 2006 Rosemary Dobson Prize for best unpublished poem by an Australian poet (“Given”).
• Runner up (Highly Commended) in ACT Writing and Publishing Awards 2005 (Poetry category), for Mapless in Underland.
• Shortlisted for 2003 ACT Poem of the Year Award (“Sur Vive”)
• Most Highly Commended, Society of Women Writers NSW Inc National Poetry Competition 2003 (“Infidelity”)
• Winner, Word Festival “Poetry Slam” 2001 (“Sister – 1″ and “Sister – 2″)
• Equal first prize, NSW Writers Centre / Sydney City Hub Inner City Life Poetry Competition, April 1997 (“Sonnet for Mill Road”).

Grants

• 2011 Received ArtsACT New Projects Grant to produce a chapbook of poems on the theme of autism

Other activities

• Participant in Five Islands Press Wollongong Poetry Workshop, January 2004
• Committee Member, ACT Writers Centre Committee, September 2003 – March 2004
• Secretary, ACT Writers Centre Committee, November 2001 – June 2002
• Member since 2002 of “Mull ‘n’ Fiddle” monthly poetry workshop group, with fellow-poets Suzanne Edgar, Michael Thorley and Martin Dolan.
• Conducted poetry workshops for Majura Womens’ Group (10 weeks; February-April 2010) and Belconnen Scribblers community writing group (May 2000).

Memberships

• Member of Australian Poetry (formerly Australian Poetry Centre and Poetry Australia Foundation) since 2004
• Member of Australian Performing Rights Association since July 2004 and Full Member (Writer) since 2007
• Full Member of Australian Society of Authors since 2001
• Member, ACT Writers Centre since 1998
• Member, NSW Writers Centre, 1997