POETRY AWARDS and SHORTLISTINGS:
2025: I owe you all a whole lot of updating!
2019: My poem in the Sept/Oct 2019 Asimov's Science Fiction, "Nine hypotheses concerning a mysterious lump under the rug on the foyer floor", was a finalist in the Asimov's Readers' Award. You can read it here. My poem "Snow" was shortlisted for the Booranga prize 2019, and printed in their annual anthology Pearl. "A blur dopplering away" was Highly Commended in the Thunderbolt Prize for Crime Poetry 2019. "Going home" was shortlisted for the 2019 ACU Prize for Poetry, on a theme of Solace. And "Black ice night, frogmouth" was Commended in the Melbourne Poets Union competition 2019. Most of those poems are included in The Alpaca Cantos.
In 2018, "The matrix" was shortlisted in the Quantum Words 2018 Science Poetry Competition, and published on their website. “all the dead people” received a “Special Commendation” in the W.B Yeats Poetry Prize for Australia in May 2018.
My poetry prizes in 2017 included first place in the New England Thunderbolt Prize for Crime Poetry (read the poem here), first place in the Humorous Verse section of the Henry Lawson awards, and first place in the NSW FAW Lambing Flat regional writing competition. My poems were also shortlisted for the ACU Prize for poetry, and Highly Commended in the Henry Kendall award.
In 2016 I won the inaugural Connemara Mussel Festival Poetry Competition (read the poem on their website with comments from Eamonn Grennan). My poems were also Highly Commended in the Humorous Verse division of the Henry Lawson Verse and Short Story Competition; Commended in the W.B. Yeats Prize for Australia and the Adelaide Plains Poetry Competition; shortlisted for the Red Room Botanic Gardens New Shoots Poetry Prize, the Rolf Boldrewood Literary Awards, the Ipswich Poetry Feast International Poetry Competition 2016; and long-listed for the University of Canberra Vice Chancellor's International Poetry Prize.
In 2015, one of my poems was Highly Commended in the Melbourne Poets Union International Poetry Competition, one was Commended in the WB Yeats Poetry Prize for Australia, and two were shortlisted for the ACU Prize for Poetry.
In 2014, I won first prize in the Humorous Verse section of the Henry Lawson Verse & Short Story Competition 2014, second prize in the inaugural Rhonda Jankovic Poetry Award promoting Social Justice, equal second prize in the WB Yeats Poetry Prize for Australia, and third prize in both the ACU Prize for Literature and the 2014 Glen Phillips Poetry Prize.
In 2013, I was awarded second prize in the Long Form section of the Science Fiction Poetry Association competition for "Hungry as living sorrow'. The poem was nominated for the 2014 SFPA Rhysling competition and received an Honorable Mention from Ellen Datlow in her annual list. And back in Deep Time, my poem "Ti-trees Rising" won the 1972 Hunter Valley Research Association's Poetry Prize, and was published in Dolly magazine in 1973.
THE LOYALTY OF CHICKENS:
My first full-length collection of poetry, published by Pitt Street Poetry in April 2017. Find out more HERE! Buy a copy!
It includes many stories previously or subsequently published in The School Magazine. Emeritus School Magazine editor Jonathan Shaw says, "Jenny Blackford’s biography mentions that her work is published regularly in The School Magazine. One of the attractive features of this book is the way poems that are eminently suitable for children are mixed in with poems of mature sensibility, with no sense of incongruity. The lovely imagistic ‘sweeping’ (‘the wind is sweeping / the tide out to sea’), is followed by ‘South Steyne’, which recalls childhood events from an amused adult perspective (‘The South Steyne ferry was heaven / for me, though doubtless hell for parents’), and then by ‘Some slight redemption’, a meditation on Coventry Cathedral as a monument ‘not to war / nor even peace / but to forgiveness’."" You can read Jonathan's full review here, or more reviews here.
THE DUTIES OF A CAT:
A suite of twelve cat poems, published by Pitt Street Poetry in December 2013 as a charmingly-designed (and easy to post!) pamphlet with glorious illustrations. The perfect gift for a distant catlover. Find out more HERE! Buy a copy!
The poems are: "Soft silk sack", "The duties of a cat", "Roughly spherical, and covered in dead leaves", "Learning how to be a cat", "Their quantum toy", "Dream hunt", "Blue mouth eerie open", "Forests of fur", "We who have known loneliness", "Cat channeling his inner harp seal pup", "En pointe in sheepskin boots" and "Something in the Corner". "Forests of fur" was reprinted in the September 2015 Touchdown edition of The School Magazine. "Cat channeling his inner harp seal pup" was reprinted in the October 2014 Touchdown edition of The School Magazine."Soft silk sack" was reprinted in the February 2014 Orbit edition of The School Magazine.
OTHER POEMS:
"noisy green fruit" – Social Alternatives journal, Issue 32(2) 2019.
"Nine Hypotheses Concerning a Mysterious Lump Under the Rug on the Foyer Floor," Asimov's Science Fiction, September/October 2019
"Going home" – shortlisted for Australian Catholic University Prize for Poetry 2019 (theme of Solace), published in the competition chapbook September 2019
"Webbing" – Manly Art Gallery "Spirit of Home" reading, Australian Poetry Collaboration 31
"A Hairy Tank" – the Countdown edition of the School Magazine, August 2019
"Meeps" and "Monster-mollusc" – The Enchanting Verses special Australian edition, July 2019
"Love is a battlefield" – Other Terrain, June 2019
"Nan with the cake", "after dental surgery" and "Tribute" -- Baby Teeth, May 2019
"Quantum String" – Asimov's Science Fiction, May/June 2019
"Christmas through the ages" and "The true meaning" – Eureka St, December 2018
"Our Lady of the Winter Squash" – Polu Texni, October 2018, and nominated for a Rhysling award.
"Against the Dark", "Knit One Give One" and "Flowerpot hats" – Eureka Street, September 2018
"slithering" – the Orbit edition of the School Magazine, September 2018, and read on YouTube by Geoffrey McSkimming
"Down in Windy Hollow" – the Touchdown edition of the School Magazine, June 2018.
"Skitty-cat" – the Countdown edition of the School Magazine, April 2018
"The crack" – First in the New England Thunderbolt Prize for Crime Poetry 2017, published on their website, December 2017
"Predator" – Going Down Swinging 38, November 2017
"Younger every week" – Highly Commended in the Henry Kendall poetry competition, published in competition anthology Ear to Earth, November 2017
"Yoga ladies' Christmas lunch" – Wild Musette, October 2017.
"Too Many Hipsters", co-authored with Talie Helene – Wild Musette, October 2017.
"The Hair in the Bag" – Pulp Literature, August 2017.
"Notalot" – the Countdown edition of the School Magazine, October 2017.
"sweeping" – the Orbit edition of the School Magazine, September 2017.
"Bella barks and bounces" – the Blast Off edition of the School Magazine, September 2017.
"The Milk of Mares" – the Touchdown edition of the School Magazine, September 2017.
"Beast" – Strange Horizons, July 2017.
"Green warriors" – shortlisted in the Botanic Gardens New Shoots Poetry Prizes 2016, published in the Red Room Botanic Gardens New Shoots competition anthology.
"Working towards sleep" – the Red Room Botanic Gardens New Shoots competition anthology.
"Short fat legs" – the cover poem for the Countdown edition of the School Magazine, June 2017.
"With bright instruments and vast humming machines" – alliterationink recompose Feb 17.
"South Steyne" – Australian Poetry Collaboration #24, January 2017.
"Things fall apart" and "A Different Britain" – Star*Line 40.1, January 2017
"A better ancient Olympics" – Polu Texni 26 December 2016.
"One small advantage" and "Mostly nameless colours" – Grievous Angel, 10 Oct 2016
"The beast in socks and sandals" – Home is the Hunter, Catchfire Press, October 2016.
"Turkey Neck" – Going Down Swinging 37, September 2016.
"Hoist Centipede" – Short & Twisted anthology, Celapene Press, July 2016.
"A Brief Guide to Australian Fauna" – Our Home is Dirt By Sea: Australian Poems for Australian Kids, May 2016 (ed. Dianne Bates, Walker Books).
"Pythia Speaks" – Star*Line 39.2, April 2016.
"Tongues and Eyes and Teeth" – Sproutlings, April 2016 (ed. Morgan Hardy Bell, Hunter Anthologies).
"The Alpaca Cantos" – Gargouille issue 3, December 2015.
"Beneath the Wheeler Centre" – Strange Horizons, September 2015.
"Game of Cat and Dragon" – Star*Line 38.3, July 2015, reprinted in the School Magazine Orbit edition March 2016.
"Ghost Irises" – Strange Horizons, May 2015.
"The Loyalty of Chickens" – The Way to the Well (Central Coast Poets Inc), December 2014, reprinted in A Quiet Shelter There (ed. Gerri Leen, Hadley Rille Books), November 2015, and in the School Magazine Touchdown edition March 2016.
"I made myself a lover" – Gargouille issue 1, December 2014.
"Ghosts of ancient underwater clouds" – Australian Poetry Journal 4.1, July 2014.
"Power Men" – Strange Horizons, 16 December 2013.
"An Afterlife of Stone" – A Slow Combusting Hymn, ed. Jean Kent and Kit Kelen, August 2014, and reprinted in 2015 Poetry & Place, ed. Ashley Capes and Brooke Linforth, May 2016.
"Red velvet cabbages", "The drowned brickworks" and "The Aluminium Apples of the Moon" – Quadrant Volume LV11, #10, October 2013. "The Aluminium Apples of the Moon" was reprinted in Eye to the Telescope 21, ed. by Marge Simon.
"Viking" (originally published in the kids' pages of the Sunday Herald when I was 12) – the Touchdown edition of The School Magazine, October 2013.
"Roughly spherical, and covered in dead leaves" – Westerly #58, July 2013.
"Engine of Strange Delights" – Dreams & Nightmares #95, May 2013
"Liquid Pleasure" – the 2013 Spring Equinox edition of Eternal Haunted Summer, reprinted in Fae Visions of the Mediterranean (eds. Valeria Vitale and Djibril al-Ayad, Future Fire), May 2016.
"Their Cold Eyes Pierced my Skin" – The Pedestal Magazine issue 70, August 2012, reprinted in the SFPA Rhysling Anthology 2013, and in The Stars Like Sand, eds. Tim Jones and P.S. Cottier, 2014.
"The Duties of a Cat" – the Orbit edition of The School Magazine, February 2012.
"Learning How to Be a Cat" – Futuredaze, ed. Erin Underwood, Underwords, February 2012.
"Their Quantum Toy" – Star*Line 35.1, February 2012.
"Silver-Clean" – Midnight Echo 6, November 2011.
"Mirror" – Midnight Echo 4, 2010, guest ed. Lee Battersby; reprinted in Ticonderoga's inaugural Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror, eds. Talie Helene and Liz Grzyb.
2025: I owe you all a whole lot of updating!
2019: My poem in the Sept/Oct 2019 Asimov's Science Fiction, "Nine hypotheses concerning a mysterious lump under the rug on the foyer floor", was a finalist in the Asimov's Readers' Award. You can read it here. My poem "Snow" was shortlisted for the Booranga prize 2019, and printed in their annual anthology Pearl. "A blur dopplering away" was Highly Commended in the Thunderbolt Prize for Crime Poetry 2019. "Going home" was shortlisted for the 2019 ACU Prize for Poetry, on a theme of Solace. And "Black ice night, frogmouth" was Commended in the Melbourne Poets Union competition 2019. Most of those poems are included in The Alpaca Cantos.
In 2018, "The matrix" was shortlisted in the Quantum Words 2018 Science Poetry Competition, and published on their website. “all the dead people” received a “Special Commendation” in the W.B Yeats Poetry Prize for Australia in May 2018.
My poetry prizes in 2017 included first place in the New England Thunderbolt Prize for Crime Poetry (read the poem here), first place in the Humorous Verse section of the Henry Lawson awards, and first place in the NSW FAW Lambing Flat regional writing competition. My poems were also shortlisted for the ACU Prize for poetry, and Highly Commended in the Henry Kendall award.
In 2016 I won the inaugural Connemara Mussel Festival Poetry Competition (read the poem on their website with comments from Eamonn Grennan). My poems were also Highly Commended in the Humorous Verse division of the Henry Lawson Verse and Short Story Competition; Commended in the W.B. Yeats Prize for Australia and the Adelaide Plains Poetry Competition; shortlisted for the Red Room Botanic Gardens New Shoots Poetry Prize, the Rolf Boldrewood Literary Awards, the Ipswich Poetry Feast International Poetry Competition 2016; and long-listed for the University of Canberra Vice Chancellor's International Poetry Prize.
In 2015, one of my poems was Highly Commended in the Melbourne Poets Union International Poetry Competition, one was Commended in the WB Yeats Poetry Prize for Australia, and two were shortlisted for the ACU Prize for Poetry.
In 2014, I won first prize in the Humorous Verse section of the Henry Lawson Verse & Short Story Competition 2014, second prize in the inaugural Rhonda Jankovic Poetry Award promoting Social Justice, equal second prize in the WB Yeats Poetry Prize for Australia, and third prize in both the ACU Prize for Literature and the 2014 Glen Phillips Poetry Prize.
In 2013, I was awarded second prize in the Long Form section of the Science Fiction Poetry Association competition for "Hungry as living sorrow'. The poem was nominated for the 2014 SFPA Rhysling competition and received an Honorable Mention from Ellen Datlow in her annual list. And back in Deep Time, my poem "Ti-trees Rising" won the 1972 Hunter Valley Research Association's Poetry Prize, and was published in Dolly magazine in 1973.
THE LOYALTY OF CHICKENS:
My first full-length collection of poetry, published by Pitt Street Poetry in April 2017. Find out more HERE! Buy a copy!
It includes many stories previously or subsequently published in The School Magazine. Emeritus School Magazine editor Jonathan Shaw says, "Jenny Blackford’s biography mentions that her work is published regularly in The School Magazine. One of the attractive features of this book is the way poems that are eminently suitable for children are mixed in with poems of mature sensibility, with no sense of incongruity. The lovely imagistic ‘sweeping’ (‘the wind is sweeping / the tide out to sea’), is followed by ‘South Steyne’, which recalls childhood events from an amused adult perspective (‘The South Steyne ferry was heaven / for me, though doubtless hell for parents’), and then by ‘Some slight redemption’, a meditation on Coventry Cathedral as a monument ‘not to war / nor even peace / but to forgiveness’."" You can read Jonathan's full review here, or more reviews here.
THE DUTIES OF A CAT:
A suite of twelve cat poems, published by Pitt Street Poetry in December 2013 as a charmingly-designed (and easy to post!) pamphlet with glorious illustrations. The perfect gift for a distant catlover. Find out more HERE! Buy a copy!
The poems are: "Soft silk sack", "The duties of a cat", "Roughly spherical, and covered in dead leaves", "Learning how to be a cat", "Their quantum toy", "Dream hunt", "Blue mouth eerie open", "Forests of fur", "We who have known loneliness", "Cat channeling his inner harp seal pup", "En pointe in sheepskin boots" and "Something in the Corner". "Forests of fur" was reprinted in the September 2015 Touchdown edition of The School Magazine. "Cat channeling his inner harp seal pup" was reprinted in the October 2014 Touchdown edition of The School Magazine."Soft silk sack" was reprinted in the February 2014 Orbit edition of The School Magazine.
OTHER POEMS:
"noisy green fruit" – Social Alternatives journal, Issue 32(2) 2019.
"Nine Hypotheses Concerning a Mysterious Lump Under the Rug on the Foyer Floor," Asimov's Science Fiction, September/October 2019
"Going home" – shortlisted for Australian Catholic University Prize for Poetry 2019 (theme of Solace), published in the competition chapbook September 2019
"Webbing" – Manly Art Gallery "Spirit of Home" reading, Australian Poetry Collaboration 31
"A Hairy Tank" – the Countdown edition of the School Magazine, August 2019
"Meeps" and "Monster-mollusc" – The Enchanting Verses special Australian edition, July 2019
"Love is a battlefield" – Other Terrain, June 2019
"Nan with the cake", "after dental surgery" and "Tribute" -- Baby Teeth, May 2019
"Quantum String" – Asimov's Science Fiction, May/June 2019
"Christmas through the ages" and "The true meaning" – Eureka St, December 2018
"Our Lady of the Winter Squash" – Polu Texni, October 2018, and nominated for a Rhysling award.
"Against the Dark", "Knit One Give One" and "Flowerpot hats" – Eureka Street, September 2018
"slithering" – the Orbit edition of the School Magazine, September 2018, and read on YouTube by Geoffrey McSkimming
"Down in Windy Hollow" – the Touchdown edition of the School Magazine, June 2018.
"Skitty-cat" – the Countdown edition of the School Magazine, April 2018
"The crack" – First in the New England Thunderbolt Prize for Crime Poetry 2017, published on their website, December 2017
"Predator" – Going Down Swinging 38, November 2017
"Younger every week" – Highly Commended in the Henry Kendall poetry competition, published in competition anthology Ear to Earth, November 2017
"Yoga ladies' Christmas lunch" – Wild Musette, October 2017.
"Too Many Hipsters", co-authored with Talie Helene – Wild Musette, October 2017.
"The Hair in the Bag" – Pulp Literature, August 2017.
"Notalot" – the Countdown edition of the School Magazine, October 2017.
"sweeping" – the Orbit edition of the School Magazine, September 2017.
"Bella barks and bounces" – the Blast Off edition of the School Magazine, September 2017.
"The Milk of Mares" – the Touchdown edition of the School Magazine, September 2017.
"Beast" – Strange Horizons, July 2017.
"Green warriors" – shortlisted in the Botanic Gardens New Shoots Poetry Prizes 2016, published in the Red Room Botanic Gardens New Shoots competition anthology.
"Working towards sleep" – the Red Room Botanic Gardens New Shoots competition anthology.
"Short fat legs" – the cover poem for the Countdown edition of the School Magazine, June 2017.
"With bright instruments and vast humming machines" – alliterationink recompose Feb 17.
"South Steyne" – Australian Poetry Collaboration #24, January 2017.
"Things fall apart" and "A Different Britain" – Star*Line 40.1, January 2017
"A better ancient Olympics" – Polu Texni 26 December 2016.
"One small advantage" and "Mostly nameless colours" – Grievous Angel, 10 Oct 2016
"The beast in socks and sandals" – Home is the Hunter, Catchfire Press, October 2016.
"Turkey Neck" – Going Down Swinging 37, September 2016.
"Hoist Centipede" – Short & Twisted anthology, Celapene Press, July 2016.
"A Brief Guide to Australian Fauna" – Our Home is Dirt By Sea: Australian Poems for Australian Kids, May 2016 (ed. Dianne Bates, Walker Books).
"Pythia Speaks" – Star*Line 39.2, April 2016.
"Tongues and Eyes and Teeth" – Sproutlings, April 2016 (ed. Morgan Hardy Bell, Hunter Anthologies).
"The Alpaca Cantos" – Gargouille issue 3, December 2015.
"Beneath the Wheeler Centre" – Strange Horizons, September 2015.
"Game of Cat and Dragon" – Star*Line 38.3, July 2015, reprinted in the School Magazine Orbit edition March 2016.
"Ghost Irises" – Strange Horizons, May 2015.
"The Loyalty of Chickens" – The Way to the Well (Central Coast Poets Inc), December 2014, reprinted in A Quiet Shelter There (ed. Gerri Leen, Hadley Rille Books), November 2015, and in the School Magazine Touchdown edition March 2016.
"I made myself a lover" – Gargouille issue 1, December 2014.
"Ghosts of ancient underwater clouds" – Australian Poetry Journal 4.1, July 2014.
"Power Men" – Strange Horizons, 16 December 2013.
"An Afterlife of Stone" – A Slow Combusting Hymn, ed. Jean Kent and Kit Kelen, August 2014, and reprinted in 2015 Poetry & Place, ed. Ashley Capes and Brooke Linforth, May 2016.
"Red velvet cabbages", "The drowned brickworks" and "The Aluminium Apples of the Moon" – Quadrant Volume LV11, #10, October 2013. "The Aluminium Apples of the Moon" was reprinted in Eye to the Telescope 21, ed. by Marge Simon.
"Viking" (originally published in the kids' pages of the Sunday Herald when I was 12) – the Touchdown edition of The School Magazine, October 2013.
"Roughly spherical, and covered in dead leaves" – Westerly #58, July 2013.
"Engine of Strange Delights" – Dreams & Nightmares #95, May 2013
"Liquid Pleasure" – the 2013 Spring Equinox edition of Eternal Haunted Summer, reprinted in Fae Visions of the Mediterranean (eds. Valeria Vitale and Djibril al-Ayad, Future Fire), May 2016.
"Their Cold Eyes Pierced my Skin" – The Pedestal Magazine issue 70, August 2012, reprinted in the SFPA Rhysling Anthology 2013, and in The Stars Like Sand, eds. Tim Jones and P.S. Cottier, 2014.
"The Duties of a Cat" – the Orbit edition of The School Magazine, February 2012.
"Learning How to Be a Cat" – Futuredaze, ed. Erin Underwood, Underwords, February 2012.
"Their Quantum Toy" – Star*Line 35.1, February 2012.
"Silver-Clean" – Midnight Echo 6, November 2011.
"Mirror" – Midnight Echo 4, 2010, guest ed. Lee Battersby; reprinted in Ticonderoga's inaugural Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror, eds. Talie Helene and Liz Grzyb.