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What the critics say:

“ many of these poems are riveting examples of poetry's pure pleasure.” The Age

“asserts that the truly strange and lyrical can be found in the quotidian.” Australian Book Review

“uses poetry to create a free self - positive, humane, fully exposed to life.” The Famous Reporter

“a rewarding book by a poet who knows it is a poet's job to define ‘a language for each morning, like this one’.” Southerly

“Jones' work is so easy on the eye and senses, you wonder what tricks she has just slipped through your inattentive gaps, because you know she has disturbed you in the most devious sort of way.” Australian Women’s Book Review

“one of our best practitioners of the meditative urban lyric, playing the range of both the soft and hard pedals.” Southerly

You can buy copies of my books online from the following publishers:
Salt Publishing
Broken/Open| Screen Jets Heaven
Picaro Press
Where the Sea Burns


Links:


Interviews with Jill

Here are some links to websites which feature interviews with me about various aspects of my poetry practice. I've included a little taste from each interview.

Ralph Wessman @ Famous Reporter

... I don’t think that I can do other than write out of where I am. But I don’t want to pour out my soul – I don’t think anyone's particularly interested in my soul. But I’m sure they’re interested in places, I’m sure they’re interested in the way words can construct a place – and that place can be an internal state. ... One can use various sorts of structures. Or sometimes it can be very straight up and down. ...

Rebecca Seiferle @ The Drunken Boat

"... RS: I'd guess most obviously that one of the similarities between the sonnet series and the photo/text is that they involve a sense of collaboration. One with a literary form that perhaps seemed 'different' enough to seem like an encounter with another reality? And the other with a different art form?

JJ: Collaboration is the way of the poet, in my view. I'm not a great believer in the garret. Of course, there's collaboration with the language, with the traditions, the various versions of the 'canon', with the work of one's contemporaries. But my own way has also been specifically collaborative in recent years. This includes the ekphrastic work I have done ..."

Tom Beckett @ e-x-c-h-a-n-g-e-v-a-l-u-e-s

... TB: Would you take me through one of your poems (your choice which) and speak to the occasion of its making? I'm looking for a concrete example of your compositional process/practice.

JJ: Ah, this one could go anywhere. First of all, my process in general is on the fly, whatever I can do in between a full-time job and a life. I used to be much more social but now I tend to work at poetry on weekends to keep up with writing and associated tasks, including blogging. I am at risk of becoming a boring person. I write on the train, en route essentially, as well as in cafes, even in meetings. There's a poem of mine which partially consists of notes made during a meeting about risk management and data collection, called 'How would you say risk management?' ...

Anny Ballardini - about blogging

... AB - Do you post many poems on your blog? Is there an actual difference in-between publishing online, mainly through a blog, or printed publishing?

JJ - I have always posted some poems but I mix it up with other comments and discussion, announcements, etc. I purposely stopped posting poems for a couple of months, just to focus on other things, even the quotidian, which is one source for my work. I think there is a difference between on-line and page publishing. It's partly the obvious. A printed book is a different material presence which also carries with it the traditional aura of the book, which is very seductive. I love paper stuff still but am happy to operate with other technologies. Books still have more staying power (ink and paper) but it remains to be seen what happens with electronic publishing. ...


Kevin Doran - about blogging

...Why do you blog, and what made you start?

One reason I began blogging was really to test out what the blogging 'thing' was about. I was prepared to give it away if it wasn't for me. There are times when I think of stopping but I have kept going with it. It can be tiring, especially when a hundred and one other things demand your attention. You can get to a point where you think you've got nothing to say.

Another reason, and probably why I still do it, is the 'community' aspect. (I don't particularly like that word, but it will do for now.) There's a sense in which, even if you only post something fairly mundane, that you are entering a community of poets and other readers, some of whom have become friendly presences and some actual presences, as we have met up. So the mundane becomes part of the conversation as much as the slightly more profound (I'm having a lend of myself here). It's an exchange, I guess. ...

Angela Meyer @ metaroar

... Q: Do you write with your nation in mind as an audience or do you feel more part of the globalised world, speaking of ‘universal’ experience?

Jill Jones: I’ve never expected my nation, or any nation, to be an audience for poetry. The poetry audience is very small everywhere. I don’t believe in ‘universal experience’. My experience is local, and my language comes out of wherever I am and wherever I’ve been. My experience isn’t the same as yours or anyone else’s, though there are correspondences and equivalences, and languages go to that and work that. I respond to poetry of many places and I find I get a response from readers all over the world. I don’t angst too much about audience but it would be nice. I have no particular attachment to the label ‘Australian’, if that’s what you mean by nation, but neither do I pretend I wasn’t born in a place that’s labeled Australia, albeit a problematic label, as ‘nation’ is. ...