I’m so thrilled to have a new ekphrastic poem in Cordite’s ‘Space’ issue, with thanks to guest editor Alicia Sometimes.
‘focused, unfurling’ is after Jane du Rand’s Thriving: Brisbane Bush Turkeys, and was written during a session of Ekphrastic Writing Club at Museum of Brisbane in 2023.
Thank you Tricia Dearborn for choosing ‘Bad poems’ to be in the latest issue of Cordite.
You can also read the entire brilliant issue #112 Treat now.
I wrote a cheeky little Pokémon poem, (titled “I Google ‘are Pokémon edible?’ and wonder if I’m a bad person”), which has been published in Cordite, with big thanks to guest editors Bec Jessen and Zenobia Frost.
Do you think about the edibility of Pokémon too? Read on…
Want to read the whole issue of Cordite POP!? Do it!
I’m pumped to be published alongside poet faves Shastra Deo, Chloë Callistemon, Mindy Gill, Keri Glastonbury, Dan Hogan, Warsan Shire, Eloise Grills, Pascalle Burton, Alex Creece, Andrew Sutherland, Matt Hetherington, Scott-Patrick Mitchell, Kate Durbin, Ray Briggs, Rory Green, Pam Brown, Susie Walsh, Jarad Bruinstroop, Heather Taylor-Johnson, Jacqui Malins, Damen O’Brien, Sean West, Jini Maxwell, Josie/Jocelyn Deane, Lore White, and so many more fab folks!
My poem #NatureIsHealing is in the new Cordite 103: AMBLE! Thank you to editors Elena Gomez and Sarah Gory ❤️
This poem will also be in my second poetry collection Exactly As I Am, published by UQP next year!
Read my poem on the Cordite website. And don’t forget to check out the rest of AMBLE.
Ray/Rei Cox and I co-wrote a poem about the basil plant that travels with her in their van. And it’s been published in Cordite Poetry Review 102: GAME!
Read our poem ‘Reverse Reverence’.
I recommend viewing the desktop/full version and reading from the bottom upwards.
Photo by Lavi Perchik on Unsplash.
Cordite has published a chapbook of new work by Queensland Poetry Festival’s 2020 Writers in (Digital) Residence: Ivan Coyote, Amina Atiq, Kate Durbin and Nick Makoha. Local poets Pascalle Burton, Kylie Thomson, Zenobia Frost and myself also responded to these commissioned works! You can read the wonderful digital chapbook (and my new poem ‘Wheelie bin’) on the Cordite website.
Image by Jackie Ryan.
Adam Ford reviewed Milk Teeth and Anders Villani’s Aril Wire in Cordite!
** You can read the full review here **
I could honestly quote the whole piece, but here’s one of the most striking paragraphs re: what I’m trying to achieve in my work:
But while gender identity is at the fore of some poems, White also challenges the potential assumption that a non-binary activist poet can or should only write about their activism. This point is successfully made by poems like ‘Plants my exes gave me’ and ‘Enraptured’, which depict experiences like gardening and falling in love that are common to all humans. In doing so White validates and celebrates the continuum of gender with other modes of experience, and hopefully educates those who believe they can only experience non-binary life vicariously.
And my absolute favourite lines:
There’s an appealing messiness, a futz and clutter, a chaos to the world White writes … Milk Teeth is an eclectic mixtape of a book, a stellar debut exhibiting equal parts ‘fuck that noise’ and a visceral love of life.
Thank you Adam and Cordite for such an insightful and eloquent review!
Yesterday I had a lovely chat about Milk Teeth with Sadie Ward on All Things Queer RTRFM 92.1. We spoke about themes of navigating the world as a non-binary person and breaking down barriers.
**You can listen back to the interview on the RTRFM website.**
I also have a poem in the latest issue of Cordite alongside some of my fave poets, including Candy Royalle, Toby Fitch, Michael Farrell, Emily Crocker, Ray Briggs, Zenobia Frost, Angela Gardner, Elizabeth Duck-Chong, Bec Jessen, Jill Jones, Madison Godfrey, Fiona Hile, and so many many more.
**Have a read of my poem ‘I’ve got something to say’.**
Also: this poem is part of a new collection I’m working on, which explores non-binary people and space: the space we take up, the space we don’t, the space we’re denied, the space we reclaim. And just between you and me, more poems from this work in progress will be published soon!
[Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash]
The wonderful Cordite Publishing Inc. commissioned Keira Edwards-Huolohan and I for an art-poetry-essay project! The process of working on this commission was collaborative, cathartic and invigorating.
‘Do more, do better’ is a poem in four parts that explores transgender discrimination through a hypothetical augmented reality (AR) mobile app. There are accompanying inked and embroidered art pieces, which reiterate key themes within the poem, and a critical statement, which analyses the poem and artwork while asking ‘the reader as well as the wider community if they are doing enough for trans people and others in marginalised communities’.
TRIGGER WARNINGS for the pieces: transphobia, including mentions of misgendering, slurs, violence, death, self-harm.
Read the poem ‘Do more, do better’.
A big thank you to Kent MacCarter and Rosalind McFarlane at Cordite for their encouragement and commission of this project. It was an absolute joy to work with you both!
I have a new poem in Cordite Poetry Review‘s CONFESSION! I’m chuffed to be alongside some of my fave poets including Stuart Barnes, Shastra Deo and Ellen van Neerven. 
Rae White 