Joan Fleming (poet) explained

Megan Joan Fleming (born 1984), is an Australian/New Zealand poet, non-fiction writer and academic.

Biography

Fleming grew up in Sydney, Australia, until employment opportunities spurred the family to relocate first to Bermuda, then Golden, Colorado, before finally settling in Auckland, New Zealand. She studied creative writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University, where she won the Biggs Poetry Prize^[1] in 2007. She graduated from the University of Otago with a Master of Arts with a thesis on the iterative poetry of Anne Carson.^{[2] [3]} She holds a PhD in ethnopoetics from Monash University,^[4] Melbourne, a city in which she now lives.

Fleming's grandparents were stationed as Baptist missionaries in the town of Yuendumu,^[5] in the Northern Territory of Australia. As a result, she has an ongoing interest in Warlpiri culture, with much of her poetry and non-fiction work focusing on themes of cultural misunderstandings, the limits of language, and the continuing effects of colonialism. More recent work also explores such themes as eco-feminism and ecological collapse.^[6]

She has published a number of collections of poetry, as well as writing and co-editing works of literary criticism, essays, short stories and book reviews for publications in Australia, New Zealand and overseas.^[7]

Awards and honours

Fleming's honours include the Biggs Poetry Prize,^[8] the Verge Prize for Poetry^[9] and the Harri Jones Memorial Prize from the Hunter Writers Centre in 2017.^[10] In 2021, she was shortlisted for the Helen Anne Bell Poetry Bequest award^{[11] [12]} for her unpublished manuscript Dirt.

Publications

Poetry

• Song of Less (Cordite, 2021)^[13]
• Some People’s Favourites (Desperate Literature, 2019)
• Failed Love Poems (Victoria UP, 2015)^[14]
• The Same As Yes (Victoria UP, 2011)
• Two Dreams in Which Things Are Taken (Duets, 2010)

Non-Fiction

• Dressing for the Apocalypse (Island, 2021^[15])
• Pulling Up the Walls (Verge, Monash UP, 2021)
• Write First, Apologise Later? (Pantograph Punch, 2020^[16])
• Notes Toward a Theory of Making (Westerly 64.1, 2019)
• Kardiya as Kindergartner: The Poetics of Ignorance in the Central Desert (Meanjin 78.1, 2019)
• Seated between the eyes of two worlds: the Intercultural work of Craig San Roque (Philosophy Activism Nature 13, 2018^[17])
• The limits of knowledge: A reflexive reading of Warlpiri poetics (JEASA 9.1, 2018^[18])
• On Misunderstanding, Masquerade, and the Prose Poem (Bonsai: Best Small Stories from Aotearoa New Zealand)

Editor

• Verge 2015 (Monash UP, 2015)

Notes and References

1. Web site: Prize winners International Institute of Modern Letters Victoria University of Wellington . 2022-06-09 . www.wgtn.ac.nz.
2. Web site: Caves are made of rock but not this cave Blue Oyster . 2022-08-23 . blueoyster.org.nz . en.
3. Fleming . M. J. . 2013 . Masters thesis . "You can of course keep shaking the box": Errant Versioning and Textual Motion in the Iterations of Anne Carson . OUR Archive, University of Otago . 10523/4334 .
4. The Limits of Imaginative Sympathy: Reading and Writing the Incommensurable in Ethnography and Ethnopoetics . Monash University . 2020-05-18 . thesis . en . Megan Joan . Fleming.
5. Web site: FLEMING, Pat - 2/03/1915 Women's Museum of Australia . 2022-06-09 . wmoa.com.au.
6. Web site: Page . Geoff . 2022-04-24 . Geoff Page reviews 'Song of Less' by Joan Fleming and 'Blight Street' by Geoff Goodfellow . 2022-06-17 . Australian Book Review . en-gb.
7. Web site: Joan Fleming . 2022-06-09 . Cordite Poetry Review . en-US.
8. Web site: Prize winners International Institute of Modern Letters Victoria University of Wellington . 2022-06-17 . www.wgtn.ac.nz.
9. Web site: Austlit . Verge Prize for Poetry AustLit: Discover Australian Stories . 2022-06-17 . www.austlit.edu.au . en.
10. Web site: Newcastle Poetry Prize . 2022-06-17 . Hunter Writers Centre . en-US.
11. Web site: Helen Anne Bell Poetry Bequest Award 2021 . 2022-06-17 . The University of Sydney . en-AU.
12. Web site: Australia's richest poetry prize winner announced . 2022-06-09 . The University of Sydney . en-AU.
13. Web site: 2021-11-16 . Introduction to Joan Fleming's Song of Less . 2022-06-17 . Cordite Poetry Review . en-US.
14. Web site: Cox . Heather . 2016-01-28 . Failed Love Makes for Heartbreaking Poetry . 2022-06-17 . Chicago Review of Books . en-US.
15. Web site: Austlit . Dressing for the Apocalypse AustLit: Discover Australian Stories . 2022-06-17 . www.austlit.edu.au . en.
16. Web site: Fleming . Joan . Write First, Apologise Later? . 2022-06-09 . Pantograph Punch.
17. Web site: PAN - Philosophy Activism Nature . 2022-06-09 . panjournal.net.
18. Web site: Volume 9, number 1 (2018) – EASA . 2022-06-09 . en-AU.