Jessica is an Associate Professor in Creative Writing in the School of Media and Communication.
Jessica is a writer, critic, scholar and editor whose research interests include: poetry and poetics; contemporary poetry; poetic biography; 'nonfiction poetry'; experimental/radical writing; literary theory. She is the founding and Managing Editor of 'Rabbit: a journal for nonfiction poetry' (2011-present) and of the Rabbit Poets Series. In her own poetry and with Rabbit, Jessica is interested in pushing boundaries of form, and in exploring what poetry can do in collision with nonfiction writing. She is also passionate about giving opportunities to new Australian writers, and in the transnational potential of literary publishing. Jessica holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Melbourne.
Jessica's poems have appeared in books, newspapers, and international anthologies and journals. She is the author of three books of poetry: 'marionette: a biography of miss marion davies' (Vagabond, 2012), 'Suite for Percy Grainger' (Vagabond, 2014) and 'Music Made Visible: A Biography of George Balanchine' (Vagabond, 2019). In 2017, she received an RMIT Research Award recognising the impact she has made to the field of 'nonfiction poetry'. She was a Creative Australia 2023 Keesing Studio (Paris) Fellow.
Research fields
360201 Creative writing (incl. scriptwriting)
3602 Creative and professional writing
4705 Literary studies
470514 Literary theory
Supervisor projects
Up\\rooted: Drifting With and Moving Inward to Poetics of Vietnamese Utterances (A Multilingual Project)
5 Sep 2024
The poetics of attention: local spaces and the maternal everyday.
28 Jun 2024
Towards Amphibious Aesthetics: Exploring Narrative Through Hybrid Writing
4 Jun 2024
Essaying the ramble and fluid convergences in my teaching artist practice
30 Jan 2024
Creative writing and publishing: play, experiments and new directions
15 Dec 2023
Ecstatic Essaying
10 Jan 2023
My Archive Fever
10 Jan 2023
Decolonising practice and positionality for publication: folklore, emigration and alienation through speculative fiction/non-fiction methodology.
3 Jan 2023
The Doubting Memoir & Doubt and Craft in Creative Writing
1 Jan 2023
Dreaming Connections in Creative Writing Practice: reverie brought to the page
1 Jan 2023
Practice Research Enquiry into Poetry as Performance
14 Jul 2021
The Code of Things: Biographical Poetry in Print and Programmable Media
20 Aug 2020
'Only in the particular': An Informational Poetics for Precision Medicine
16 Apr 2020
Persist: An Affective, Autoethnographic Feminist Creative Practice Model
16 Apr 2020
“George Sand (and Me)” A Poetic Auto/biography and Dissertation
11 Jul 2019
Emotional Information
26 Jun 2019
Self-Portrait: A Performance Autoethnography of Un-faithing
13 Nov 2018
Always Already Translated: A Singapore Poet in Translation
13 Aug 2018
A Body at the Edge of Language: writing anorexia, bulimia and recovering
22 Mar 2018
A White Woman Stories to Decolonise (Herself).
Creative meanderings through the cultural abyss.
17 Oct 2017
Writing the Multiple: From Chapalang to Confluence
1 Aug 2016
Moxie: Vintage Feminism as Poetic Method
2 Mar 2015
TWITCH GOTHIC: An Exploration of the Female Protagonist in Contemporary Australian Gothic Short Fiction
3 Mar 2014
Essaying Bodies, Bodying Essays: Write in the Middle is a Creative-Critical Research Practice
3 Mar 2014
Not Fraying at the Edges: women, ageing and creativity.
1 Aug 2013
Teaching interests
Contemporary poetry; Poetry and Poetics; Avant-garde and Experimental writing; myth, Contemporary literature; Literary theory
Research interests
Creative Writing, Literary Studies, Poetry and Poetics, 'Nonfiction Poetry', Life Writing
Acknowledgement of Country
RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business - Artwork 'Sentient' by Hollie Johnson, Gunaikurnai and Monero Ngarigo.