There is so much light and air in this poem… an effortless and gentle lyric, which uses line breaks to force the reader to ask questions of themselves. Damen O’Brien and Lucy Van, judges’ report, Val Vallis Award.
Selected creative works
“Paper Days’” in the 2025 Poetry d’Amour Prize Anthology. Forthcoming.
“Ghost glosa”, in Island #175.
“Protection spell against EO 14147 through EO 14291“, Cordite Poetry Review, Issue 117, No Theme 4.
“Xanthopan Morganii Praedicta” in The Marrow International Poetry Journal, Issue Four.
“The past walks at night” in Australian Poetry Journal 14.1, ‘Walking’, edited by Jake Goetz.
“Somersaults in Space” in We are making a boat, love: 30 years of experimental feminist writing in Australia, a collaborative experiment in écriture matière. Edited by Quinn Eades and Francesca Rendle-Short.
“Untethered” in 100 Poets, edited by Brian Purcell and Kit Kelen, Flying Islands Pocket Books 2025.
“Autumn Days” in Poetry of Change, the 2024 Liquid Amber Poetry Prize anthology, edited by Rose Lucas, Ali Whitelock and Reneé Pettitt-Schipp.
“The holding” in the 2024 ACU Prize for Poetry Anthology.
“Fallowing” in the 2024 South Coast Writer’s Centre Poetry Award Anthology. Forthcoming. Listen to a reading of “Fallowing” here.
“Turning” and “Body Mapping at the Arachnoid Disco” in The Writing Mind: Creative Responses to Images of the Living Brain, edited by Julia Prendergast, Eileen Herbert-Goodall & Jen Webb. Recent Work Press, 2023.
“The Invisible Deep” in Rabbit #38, The Archive Issue.
“Learning to use a drill at forty-three” in Island #168, and Best of Australian Poems 2024.
“Just like the day before and the day” in Griffith Review #81, The Leisure Principle.
“An Initiation” in Live Encounters Poetry and Writing, Special Australian Edition, August 2023.
“The one light is the light in all bodies” in Australian Poetry Anthology #10
Two poems: “The way there” and “On finding and not finding Levertov” in AXON: Creative Explorations, Volume 12.2, Archives, counter-memory, creative practice and poetry.
“Shrinking sestina” in Australian Poetry Journal 12.1, ‘divergence, relevance’.
“Night vision” in The Canberra Times, 26th November 2022.
“This season’s out-welling” in Science Write Now, Issue 6 and Bukker Tillibul # 10, “Hauntings Special Issue”. Ed., Rachel Le Rossignol.
“Ways of Seeing”, Tom Collins Poetry Prize, Fellowship of Australian Writers, WA.
“memorandum: floreat:” in StylusLit.
“The last of this red hour” in Science Write Now, Issue 5, Illustration and Illumination.
“The Levadeiro” in Plumwood Mountain: An Australian and International Journal of Ecopoetry and Ecopoetics, Volume 8, Number 1.
“Turning” for the SCAN (Science/Art Network)-AAWP collaboration.
“Sail” in Grieve vol. 10, 2022.
“’The Rilke Index’ or, ‘Rilkean-Levertovian Thinking’” (7 poem sequence) in TEXT Special Issue Series, Poetry Now Edited by Jessica Wilkinson, Cassandra Atherton and Sarah Holland-Blatt.
“Manifest” for Telephone, international ekphrasis project, 2021.
“Note to Self (in Novel Times)” in Prendergast, J, S Strange & J Webb (eds) 2020, The Incompleteness Book. Recent Work Press.
“Note to Self (in Novel Times),” in Prendergast, J, S Strange & J Webb (eds) 2020 the in / completeness of human experience, TEXT Special Issue Number 58, TEXT: Journal of writing and writing courses 24, 1 (April): 36.
“Moon Wrasse” in Writing from Below, Volume 3, No 1: MASC.
“Up to Our Knees In It” in Bukker Tillibul # 10, “Hauntings Special Issue”. Ed., Rachel Le Rossignol.
“Anthony Lawrence’s word pool”in Yellow Field, #11. April 2016 (Buffalo, N.Y.).
“‘Web’. After Levertov” in Yellow Field, #11. April 2016 (Buffalo, N.Y.).
“Propagules for drift and dispersal” in Australian Poetry Anthology 2015.
“Cooing to R. A” in Mascara Literary Review.
“Some words for migratory birds” in Meniscus, Volume 3, Issue 1.
“After Malouf, Flights, 3” in Cordite Poetry Review, Issue 43.0: ‘Masque’.
Selected awards
“This poem bristles with life, yet has a perfected restraint that makes it yearn and reach with tender hands.” Scott-Patrick Mitchell, judge’s report, Tom Collins Poetry Prize.
Commended, the 2025 Poetry d’Amour Prize, for ‘Paper Days’.
Shortlisted, ACU Prize for Poetry 2024, for ‘The holding’.
Longlisted, Liquid Amber Poetry Prize 2024, for ‘Late Autumn’.
Shortlisted, South Coast Writer’s Centre Poetry Award, 2024, for ‘Fallowing’.
Shortlisted, Val Vallis Award 2022, for ‘The one light is the light in all bodies’.
Runner-up, Tom Collins Poetry Prize 2021, for ‘Ways of Seeing’.
Longlisted, Grieve Writing Awards 2021, for ‘Sail’.
Australia Council for the Arts Career Development Grant (Poetry) for a mentorship with Felicity Plunkett.
Vice Chancellor’s commendation for academic excellence in a PhD Thesis for “Cognitive Integration and the ‘Rilke Index’: Distributed Cognition, literary influence and the early notebook practices of Denise Levertov & Quiet Deputies , a volume of poetry.”
Northside Arts Festival Prize, for best essay on a work of art in any artistic form, or on a topic in the field of aesthetics.
Willo Drummond 