Outback journey inspires poetry collections

Not everyone would love to camp in the desert under the stars, encounter a hungry dingo or paddle in a waterhole at Uluru, but Surf Coast award-winning poet Julie Maclean likes to get out and about to find inspiration.

Tired of looking out the same window for 18 months, she said her creative juices ran dry until April this year.

Between lockdowns, she took off with her partner and some family members, heading north to Uluru, then across the Simpson Desert (now known as Munga-Thirri) to Birdsville.

This was not Maclean’s first time to the desert or to the outback but she said seeing the Rock, the Painted Desert in South Australia and crossing the inland sea across salt lakes began to fire her imagination.

She assembled two small collections of road trip poems based on her travels to Central Australia and to Cape York, and both were published by Ginninderra Press this year.

Maclean’s poetry, fiction and reviews have appeared in The Best Australian Poetry, Cordite, The Griffith Review, Island, Kill Your Darlings, Overland, POETRY (Chicago), Southerly and The Age, among others.

Her full collection When I saw Jimi, shortlisted for the Crashaw Prize (Salt Publishing, UK) in 2012, was joint winner of the Geoff Stevens Poetry Prize (Indigo Dreams Publishing, UK) in 2013.

The two new collections, Mirage – A Journey into the Red Heart and Unsettled – A Journey into the Far North, will be launched by Melbourne Poets Union and introduced by local author John Bartlett at the Eastern Hub, Geelong on August 14 at 2pm (subject to public health orders).

Bookings are required at [email protected]. Entry is $5 at the door. Bring a poem to read.

If you can’t make it to the event but would like to buy copies they are $5 each via the author, and they are also available online at the Ginninderra Press website.