Publications
Books
The Owl Inside
Puncher & Wattmann, 2020
“The Owl Inside dictates everyday encounters with alterity, as if Jack Spicer was a single mum shacked up on the shores of Lake Macquarie, distilling a language of the alien self. Ireland’s collection is a paean to pent up frustrations and anxieties, absolved by a humble heuristics of living. Her muse: bin night.” — Keri Glastonbury
Porch Light
Puncher & Wattmann, 2015
“In the poem ‘Nuclear’, after stating ‘… Nothing is ever obvious or contained’, Ivy Ireland asks, ‘How can I write / a lyric poem about the micro-needle in the gargantuan multiverse?’ Yet, in a book replete with angels, devils, evolutionary theory, astro-physics, mythology, magpie song, winter flowers, ghost gums, strangler figs, human love and human fear, this is what she does. Never obvious or contained, Porch Light is its own multi-verse of ideas, speculations and puzzlements. It swings from abstract terminology to idiomatic vigour, from doubt to joy, from mind to body. This is exciting writing, exciting reading.” — Brook Emery
Incidental Complications
Poets Union Press, 2007
“The poems in Ivy Ireland’s debut collection, Incidental Complications, are infused with an awareness and knowledge of contemporary of science, cosmology and ancient mysticism. Through these prisms her poetry investigates what it means to be a human in a 21st-century universe; and explores relationship to oneself and one’s body, as well as the nature of intimate relationships with others. Ivy Ireland writes with poise, depth, grit and vision, negotiating the shifts between the scientific abstract and the subjective vernacular in her rhetoric. While there is a strong sense of gravity in her poems, her distinctive poetic discourse displays some levitational charm.” — Joanne Burns
Tide
Flying Islands Press, 2024
‘There’s a lot going on in Ivy Ireland’s poems. Lines flex and fizz with ideas, descriptions flip into speculation, the abstract is suddenly personal as the poet, in the first poem from the fantastic sequence ‘Passage’, gambles on
that slim chance of working out
how I found myself here in the first place.
Nature, gods, spirits, travel, motherhood are all swept up in poetry which journeys swiftly and
widely, in wonder and uncertainty.
‘Existential’ is an overused word but it is appropriate to describe this mortal, buoyant, inquisitive
poetry.’
— Brook Emery
Anthologies
Hope, Janette (ed.). Women of Words: 2019-2021. Puncher & Wattmann, 2022.
Kent, Jean et al. (eds.), This Gift, This Poem. Puncher & Wattmann, 2021.
Kaylock, Julia and O’Hagan, Denise (eds.). Poetry for the Planet. Black Quill Press, 2021.
Hoppe, Janette (ed.). Women of Words: 2016-2018. Puncher & Wattmann, 2020.
Kaylock, Julia and O’Hagan, Denise (eds.). Massages from the Embers: Australian Bushfire Poetry Anthology. Black Quill Press, 2020.
Atherton, Cassandra and Hetherington, Paul (eds.). Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry Melbourne University Press, 2020.
Shane Strange (ed.). Silence: The University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize 2019. UC International Poetry Studies Institute, 2019.
Allison, Dael (ed.). Brew: 30 Years of Poetry at the Pub Newcastle Poetry at the Pub, 2018.
Kent, Jean and Kelen, Kit (eds.). A Slow Combusting Hymn: Poetry from and about Newcastle and the Hunter Region. ASM and Cerberus Press, 2014.
Time with The Sky: Newcastle Poetry Prize, 2010. Hunter Writer’s Centre, 2010.
Pretty, Ron (ed.). Voices from the Meadow: Wollongong Poetry Workshop Anthology. Five Islands Press, 2007.
Anthology: Collected Voices of New Felons, New Felons, 2008
Aitken, Katherine and Freij, Maria (eds.). Archipelago: An Anthology of Creative Writing from the University of Newcastle. Archipelago Group, 2006.
