Ghosts Struggle to Swim
Jane Frank
“Jane Frank’s poems take us into moments which are at once familiar and strange: tapestries and installations of her family and her world. At turns wise and wistful, these poems are snapshots of art, philosophy, landscape and memory. A beautiful and overdue first collection of poetry.”
– Damen O’Brien
Wide River
Jane Frank
“There is a seamless quality underpinning her poetry, making the reading of it an effortless and thoroughly enjoyable experience. ”
– Denise O’Hagan, Rochford Street Review
Jane
Frank
Jane is a Brisbane poet, originally from Maryborough in the Fraser Coast region of Queensland.
Her work evokes forgotten histories and is inspired by art, travel, the landscapes of childhood, time spent by the sea and discovering the surreal in the everyday.
Jane’s latest poetry chapbook is Wide River, published by Calanthe Press in 2020. It explores art, loss, the state of the planet, her connection to the Mary River in the Fraser Coast region of Queensland and how these things intersect.
Her first poetry chapbook, Milky Way of Words, was published by Ginninderra Press in the Picaro Poets series in 2016.
Jane lectures in creative and professional writing and literary studies at Griffith University. She has research interests in poetics, cultural sociology and the enduring significance of books in the digital age.
Follow Jane at: https://janefrankpoetry.wordpress.com/ and https://www.facebook.com/JaneFrankPoet/
Publications
Jane’s poems have appeared widely in national and international journals and anthologies including:
Algebra of Owls, Antipodes, Australian Poetry Journal, Westerly, Not Very Quiet, Cicerone Journal, Cordite Poetry Review, The Blue Nib, Bengaluru Review, Backstory, Other Terrain Journal, Hecate, Meniscus, Meridian, Stilts Journal, Tincture Journal, Stylus Lit, foam:e, Blue Bottle Journal, Communion, Snorkel, Plumwood Mountain, Pressure Gauge, Uneven Floor, Verity La, Bluepepper, The Bimblebox Art Project, Social Alternatives, Live Encounters, Shearsman, The Ekphrastic Review, Antiphon, Takahe, Burrow, Popshot, Poetry Salzburg Review, Yellow Chair Review, London Grip, The Frogmore Papers, Morphrog, Northwords Now, The Poets’ Republic, Gutter, NOON, The Missing Slate, Local Nomad, Deep Water Literary Journal, Grey Sparrow, Skylark Review, Eunoia Review, Three Drops from a Cauldron, The Lake, The Cannon’s Mouth, Automatic Pilot, Open Mouse, Your One Phone Call, Streetcake, Snakeskin, Gold Dust Magazine, Nutshells and Nuggets, Shetland Create, The Wolfian, Sonic Boom, The Bombay Review and Silver Birch Press.
Poems have also been anthologised in Poetry for the Planet (Litoria Press, 2021), Grieve vols 7, 8 and 9 (Hunter Writers Centre, 2019-21) Not Very Quiet: The Anthology (Recent Work Press, 2021), Meridian (APWT / Drunken Boat Media 2020), Aiblins: New Scottish Political Poetry (Luath 2017), Heroines: An Anthology of Short Fiction and Poetry (Neo Perennial Press 2018, 2019), Forty Voices Strong: An Anthology of Contemporary Scottish Poetry (University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, 2019), Pale Fire: New Writings on the Moon (The Frogmore Press, 2019), Travellin’ Mama (Demeter Press, 2019), Fiolet and Wing: An Anthology of Domestic Fabulist Poetry (2019), Spectral Lines: Poems about Scientists (Alternating Current Press, 2019), Dragons of the Prime (The Emma Press, 2019) and ITWOW International (2016).
Prizes
In 2020, Jane was runner-up in the Wigtown Poetry Prize. She was joint winner, in 2019, of the Queensland Poetry Festival Philip Bacon Ekphrasis Award for her poem ‘Afterlife’. She has twice been shortlisted for the Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize for an unpublished manuscript— in 2020 for Wolf Moon, and in 2016 for Dancing with Charcoal Feet. In 2021, she was shortlisted for the Newcastle Poetry Prize.
Performance
During the COVID-19 Pandemic, she participated in two poetry series: Hugh McMillan’s Pestilence Poems, and Queensland Poetry Festival’s Panacea Poets. She was a feature poet at StAnza International Poetry Festival (in Scotland) in March 2021.
Other
Jane’s academic book Regenerating Regional Culture: A Study of the International Book Town Movement was published in 2017 by Palgrave Macmillan. It was adapted from her doctoral thesis of the same name submitted in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science at Griffith University.