Jessica Wilkinson

Jessica L. Wilkinson has published three poetic biographies, Marionette: A Biography of Miss Marion Davies (Vagabond 2012), Suite for Percy Grainger (Vagabond 2014) and Music Made Visible: A Biography of George Balanchine (Vagabond 2019). Jessica is the founding editor of Rabbit: a journal for nonfiction poetry and the offshoot Rabbit Poets Series of single-author collections. She co-edited the anthologies Contemporary Australian Feminist Poetry (Hunter Publishers, 2016) and Memory Book: Portraits of Older Australians in Poetry and Watercolours (Hunter Publishers, 2021), and is an Associate Professor in Creative Writing at RMIT University, Melbourne.
All essays by Jessica Wilkinson
‘The precise punctuation of your breath’: Jordie Albiston’s oeuvre
In the wake of the loss of Australian poet Jordie Albiston on the last day of February of this year, I have been reflecting on the profound influence her work had on my reading, writing and appreciation of poetry since I first read excerpts of her work in an undergraduate course reader.
How Poems Make Things Happen
Can poetry make things happen? Can poetry bring about change? Does it hold that power? In the wake of the heaving 2020 chronicle of civil rights protests, a global pandemic and environmental disasters, what role can poetry play towards a recovering world?