Susan Hawthorne writes…

It is with enormous sadness that I write this about the death of Jordie Albiston over the weekend. As the first publisher of her work in book form, the Spinifex connection and friendship with Jordie goes back nearly three decades. In 1995, her collection Nervous Arcs was published in a joint volume with Diane Fahey‘s The Body in Time. Nervous Arcs won the Mary Gilmore Award, was runner-up in the Anne Elder Award and shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Award. Jordie continued her connection with Spinifex as an editor and she worked with a number of Spinifex poets including Patricia Sykes and me. As a poet, I learnt a great deal from Jordie about poetry editing and my work was lifted by her generous and insightful comments. When storage pressures at Spinifex found us asking authors if they wanted to buy some copies of their books at a reduced price, Jordie offered to store boxes of books under her house, a well protected dry space. This generous act allowed us to keep books there for many years.

Jordie Albiston was an extraordinary poet and this was obvious from her earliest work. She mentored poets and in her work she managed to combine simultaneously complexity and simplicity. Her work was recognised by many awards and shortlistings, the most recent of which were winning the Patrick White Award in 2019 and as a finalist in the Melbourne City of Literature Award in 2021.

The poetry world is mourning the loss of Jordie Albiston.