Arts Queensland Poet-in-Residence
Established in 2005, QP invites national and international talent to engage directly with Queensland's poetry and spoken-word communities.
Naomi Shihab Nye
We’re proud to welcome Naomi Shihab Nye as our Arts Queensland Poet in Digital Residence for 2023.
Naomi Shihab Nye - Rescue
Read Rescue, a suite of commissioned poems by our Arts Queensland Digital Poet in Residence 2023, Naomi Shihab Nye.
About Naomi Shihab Nye
Palestinian-American writer, editor and educator Naomi Shihab Nye grew up in St. Louis, Jerusalem, and San Antonio, Texas, where she continues to live. She has been Young People’s Poet Laureate for the U.S. (Poetry Foundation), poetry editor for the New York Times magazine, and The Texas Observer, and a visiting writer in hundreds of schools and communities all over the world. Her books include Everything Comes Next, The Tiny Journalist, Voices in the Air, Sitti’s Secrets, Habibi, This Same Sky, & The Tree is Older than You Are: Poems & Paintings from Mexico. Her volume 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, was a finalist for the National Book Award. The Turtle of Oman and The Turtle of Michigan have both been part of the Little Read program, North Carolina. She received Lifetime Achievement Awards from The Texas Institute of Letters and the National Book Critics Circle.
Joelle Taylor
In 2022-2023 we welcomed Joelle Taylor as our Arts Queensland Poet in Residence, with an engaging program delivered both online and in-person.
About Joelle Taylor
Joelle Taylor is the author of 4 collections of poetry and a novel. Her most recent collection C+NTO & Othered Poems won the 2021 T.S Eliot Prize and was the subject of a Radio 4 arts documentary Butch. C+NTO was nominated for the Rathbone Folio Prize, longlisted for the Ondaatje Prize, and won 2022 the Polari Book Prize. It was named by The Telegraph, the New Statesman, The Guardian, The White Review & Times Literary Supplement as one of the best poetry books of the year, as well as DIVA magazine’s Book of the Month, and awarded 5 stars by the Morning Star. She has completed a book tour of Australia including Sydney Opera House (March 2022). C+NTO is currently being adapted for theatre with a view to touring.
2021 Recipients
In 2021 we welcomed three poets and spoken word artists for our Arts Queensland Poet in (Digital) Residence program, delivered remotely.
Andy Jackson
Watch an intimate, engaging reading by Andy Jackson.
Read Andy’s commissioned suite of poems ‘Unalone poems’.
Andy Jackson is a poet, essayist and creative writing teacher. He has been shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, the John Bray Poetry Award and the Victorian Premier's Prize for Poetry. Andy has co-edited disability-themed issues of Southerly and Australian Poetry Journal, and his latest poetry collection is Human Looking (Giramondo, 2021).
Laniyuk
Listen to four stunning poems read by Laniyuk.
Read Laniyuk’s commissioned suite of poems ‘Bird of Paradise’.
Laniyuk is a Larrakia, Kungarakan, Gurindji, and French writer and performer of poetry and short memoir. She contributed to the book Colouring the Rainbow: Blak, Queer and Trans Perspectives in 2015, has been published online in Djed Press and the Lifted Brow, as well as in print poetry collections such as UQP’s 2019 Solid Air and 2020 Fire Front. She received Canberra’s Noted Writers Festival’s 2017 Indigenous Writers Residency, Overland’s 2018 Writers Residency and was shortlisted for Overland’s 2018 Nakata-Brophy poetry prize. She runs poetry workshops for festivals, moderates panel discussions, and has given guest lectures at ANU and The University of Melbourne. She is currently completing her first collection of work to be published through Magabala Books.
Eileen Myles
Watch a captivating poetry reading by Eileen Myles.
Read Eileen’s commissioned poem ‘IN QUEENSLAND’.
Eileen Myles (they/them) came to New York from Boston in 1974 to be a poet. Their books include For Now (an essay/talk about writing), I Must Be Living Twice/new and selected poems, and Chelsea Girls. They showed their photographs in 2019 at Bridget Donahue, NYC. Eileen has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and an award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. They live in New York and Marfa, TX.
2020 Recipients
In 2020 we welcomed four poets and spoken word artists for our Arts Queensland Poet in (Digital) Residence program, delivered remotely.
Read our 2020 Poet in (Digital) Residence chapbook Chewing on a Ruby Passport published through Cordite.
Ivan Coyote
Ivan Coyote is a writer and storyteller, the author of twelve books, the creator of four films, three albums, and an international touring performer. Coyote’s new book, Rebent Sinner, was released in 2019 by Arsenal Pulp Press. In 2017 Ivan was given an honorary PHD from Simon Fraser University for their writing and activism.
Nick Makoha
Nick Makoha‘s debut Kingdom of Gravity was shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Prize and nominated by The Guardian as one of the best books of 2017. Both a Cave Canem Graduate Fellow and Complete Works Alumni, he won the 2015 Brunel prize and 2016 Derricotte & Eady Prize for his pamphlet Resurrection Man.
Amina Atiq
Amina Atiq is a Yemeni-Scouse writer, performance artist & activist. She is a Curious Minds Young Associate & BBC Words First Finalist 2019. Atiq’s work explores the conflict of her dual identity – of her heartland, Yemen, and her homeland, Liverpool. She is writing a one-woman poetry-theatre play, revisiting her grandmother’s 1970s Yemeni-British household.
Kate Durbin
Kate Durbin is a Los Angeles-based artist and writer. Her books include Hoarders, forthcoming from Wave Books in 2021, E! Entertainment, The Ravenous Audience, and ABRA. ABRA is also a free, interactive iOS app that is ‘a living text’, which won the 2017 international Turn On Literature Prize for electronic literature. In 2015, she was the Arts Queensland Poet-in-Residence in Brisbane, Australia.
Other past residents included Joy Harjo, Warsan Shire, Selina Tusitala Marsh, Kate Durbin, Courtney Sina Meredith, Yona Harvey, Jeet Thayil, Hinemoana Baker, Michael Hofmann, Paul Durcan, Louise Wallwein, Jacqueline Turner and Emily XYZ.
