lemon oil

lemon oil, my second full-length poetry collection.

‘lemon oil’ book cover
 

lemon oil

In this dream
I heal the cuts
his bareness
has left
all over me

with tart, sparse,
sweet, spreading
lemon oil,
the same soft stings

with which I nurture
your smooth
unlacquered
fret-slit
rosewood
fingerboard

 
The pressing, convincing voice of these poems drives you to read fast and then catch your breath, to search for answers and encounter love. Jackson’s second collection is fiery, bold and brave — it unravels everyday stories and raw encounters in a poetic and potent play of language and lemon oil. I don’t know of any other Australian poet who is writing with the combined verve and craft of Jackson. — Claire Potter
 
lemon oil is also available from public libraries and at the National Poetry Library in London.

 
Published in 2013 by Mulla Mulla Press. 120 pages. ISBN 9780987517005. Cover design by Coral Carter.

Coracle

Coracle, my first full-length poetry collection. 94 of my readers’ and audiences’ favourite poems in a sequence that is in itself a poem. Read from front to back it will surely mess with your mind.

‘Coracle’ e-book cover

from Celtic Knots

(St Audoen’s Church, Dublin, 2005)

Temple of history, temple
of short lives long
gone, temple of hundreds
of souls… trod
on me hard as I trod
on its layers
of graves. Quiet
spirits whispered hundreds
of hushes
from the eleventh-
century walls.

If I ever go to church in Dublin this is where.
Not in St Patrick’s with its souvenir stalls.

If I go back to Dublin,
if I take you there,
let me take you to St Audoen’s…

View or download the e-book From the opening lines of the first poem, the reader is introduced to a powerful, resonant and poignantly moving voice … Jackson’s poetry is lean and purposeful … There are many stunning poems here, wry and wistful, love poems with a heartbreaking absence of sentimentality, terrific poems of place and observation and understanding … Coracle is unreservedly recommended. — Shane McCauley in Indigo

If words were chemicals, the potency packed into Coracle would need a stronger container than paper and ink, page and stanza. Jackson’s voice is immediate, the sensations intense, the experiences intelligently informed by free association, by her sense of the absurd and a poignant sensibility. … [Jackson’s] expression is as contemporary, individual and vivid as a digital video and, like an online broadcast, it seeks to straddle the divide between personal and public worldviews. This collection should carry a warning: Your perception will be altered. — Annamaria Weldon

View or download the e-book If you’d like a print copy, please contact me. Coracle is also available through the Australian public library system.
Published in 2009 by the author. 92 pages. ISBN 9780646508757. Cover design by Raymond Grenfell.

This is not my gig

This is not my gig, a 24-page zine containing 22 peculiar poems.

‘This is not my gig’ zine cover
 

In the dream, he tells me he doesn’t need a condom

In the dream, he tells me
he doesn’t need a condom
because

he has his book. In the dream, we’ve both
read it. Condoms are a manifestation
of Capitalism. A Bad Thing. Probably

made by Monsanto. We don’t
need them. We can use our minds
to divert the sperm. In the dream

I know it works, if done
correctly, wholeheartedly,
together. We have to trust.

I can’t.
I can’t.
I can’t. Yet

in the dream, we don’t
have a condom
to our name.
 

Published in 2014 by the author. ISBN 9780987080936.