Julie Maclean

Hi! Thanks for visiting. I’m an Anglo-Australian writer from Bristol, UK, living on the Surf Coast in Victoria, Australia. In a former life I was a teacher of English, Drama and EAL here and in the UK. I retired from teaching in 2010 to write full time. My first book was published three years later when I was sixty after winning a poetry competition in the UK, so it’s never too late.

My poems, short fiction and reviews have appeared in The Best Australian Poetry, POETRY (Foundation), BODY Literature, Shearsman, The Rialto, Southerly, Island, FLASH (UK and US), Overland, Cordite Review, Poetry Salzburg, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Rabbit Poetry, Verity La, The Antigonish Review and Event (Canada), The Griffith Review and Kill Your Darlings, among others.

NEWS FLASH! As joint winner of the 2023 Dreich Slims Poetry Competition, my latest book was red was love will be published in February 2024.

Marion McCready says, ‘This is a collection of poems that fizz with energy, wry humour and a great deal of bathos. Maclean’s talent for the unpredictable, line by line, makes reading these poems feel like being caught up in a high-speed car chase which could easily swing out of control but under Maclean’s deft handling, the reader is contained in elegance and style. This is life observed up close with, at times, biting darkness. Not quiet poems and yet lyrical and tender, love poems refracted through bold and unexpected visuals. Life as we                           know it and yet don’t know it until we read it here.

Pippa Little says, ‘Strange, engaging, wry –these poems fizz and simmer together form a carnivale of a collection.

Geraldine Wall says, ‘In this impressive memoir the poet challenges her reader with surrealistic juxtaposition of signifiers, but also writes more narratively, to suggest in precise and powerful language remembered people, events, moods which are unique to her but have deeply accessible resonances for her reader.

Publications and Collaborations

2024  was red was love Joint winner of the Dreich Slims Poetry Competition.
2023  Beak    Ginninderra Press
2022  Wet Zone and Spirit  Ginninderra Press
2021  Mirage  Ginninderra Press
2020  Unsettled   Ginninderra Press
2019  Tango Boleo, w/Avril Bradley  Ginninderra Press
2017  Lips that Did    Dancing Girl Press, US
2014  Kiss of the Viking    Poetry Salzburg
2014  To Have to Follow w/Terry Quinn  Indigo Dreams Publishing, UK
2014  You Love You Leave -e-chapbook    Kind of a Hurricane Press, US.
2013  When I Saw Jimi   Indigo Dreams Publishing, UK
This was a full manuscript shortlisted for the Crashaw Prize (Salt), described as ‘major new talents’ and published as joint winner (with Terry Quinn) of the Geoff Stevens Memorial Poetry Prize, (Indigo Dreams Publishing, UK)

Awards

2023   Joint winner of Dreich Slims Poetry Competition, UK.
2020   Shortlisted for the Bass Coast Prize for Non-Fiction.
2019   Shortlisted for Overland’s Fair Australia Prize.
2018   Longlisted in the Rialto Nature and Place Poetry Competition.
2018   Awarded residency by Booranga Writers.
2017   Two poems highly commended in the W B Yeats Poetry Prize.
2016   Winner Booranga Prize for Poetry.
2017   Longlisted for Red Room Fellowship
2017   Highly commended Booranga Prize for Fiction.
2016   Poem shortlisted for the Red Room Company New Shoots Project.
2015   Shortlisted for Booranga Prize for Poetry.
2014   Shortlisted for the Rachel Funari Short Fiction Prize.
2014   One of two poets, in addition to commissioned works,
selected for Wandering Words, a chapbook of ekphrastic poems
presented at Sensing Spaces at the Royal Academy, London.
2013   Joint winner of Geoff Stevens Memorial Poetry Prize, Indigo Dreams Publishing, UK.
2012   Full manuscript shortlisted for the Crashaw Prize (Salt).

Feature Poet

LA Cultural Review
Sundress Best Dressed, US
Tincture
Melbourne Poets Union
Winter Words at Airey’s Inlet and Portarlington.
Poetry at the Dan, Melbourne
Damson Poets, UK
Tania Hershman’s blogspot
Clare Carlin’s Pieced Work.

Anthologies

Poetry for the Planet-Julie Kaylock and Denise O’Hagan
The Result Is What You See Today, (Smith/Doorstop anthology on running, 2019)
Best Australian Poetry (UQP)
Australian Poetry Journal
Sylvia is Missing (Flarestacks, UK)
Heartshoots (Indigo Dreams Publishing, UK)
fourW New Writing (Booranga Writers),
Motherhood, Dance and The Sea (The Emma Press, UK).
New Shoots, (Red Room Poetry)
Regime