Isabella G. Mead is a poet from Naarm/Melbourne.
Her debut poetry collection, The Infant Vine, is published by UWAP.
Her work has also appeared in Meanjin, Island, Griffith Review, Rabbit, Westerly, Cordite Poetry Review, Anthropocene, Going Down Swinging and Plumwood Mountain Journal. In 2024, she won the Venie Holmgren Environmental Poetry Prize. In 2023, she was shortlisted for the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize.
You can listen to an interview with Isabella on 3CR here.
You can read interviews with Isabella online here and in HOWL Magazine here.
You can read reviews of The Infant Vine in Books+Publishing, ArtsHub, Compulsive Reader, Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Society and Eureka Street.
Isabella reads a selection of her poems on the ‘Eat the Storms’ poetry podcast (episode 9, season 12).
The Infant Vine (2024), UWAP
Lyrical and narrative-driven with playful and fantastical elements woven throughout, the poems in The Infant Vine reflect on how ordinary moments become charged with significance and strangeness when disaster strikes. Such moments make imaginary worlds possible: sleep deprivation transfigures a new mother into a leafy seadragon; a novel virus gives women the power to reproduce via parthenogenesis like the eponymous bonnethead shark.
Themes of transformation, metamorphosis and preservation—of life, of memory and the environment—permeate Isabella G. Mead’s debut collection. This is a rich and compelling exploration on caregiving and creativity in the context of global crises.
Poetry
Recent publications
‘Building, Antenna, Span & Earth’ — Verge: Blue, Monash University Publishing, 2025
‘You will be seen now’ – Griffith Review 88: Culture Vultures, 2025
‘On an Antique Breast Pump’ – Cordite Poetry Review, Issue 116: Remember, 2025
‘On Waking’ – Poetry and Prints for Palestine, Illographo Press, October 2024
‘Twenty Ways to Describe Suzanne Bergne’s ‘Dish’ (1989)’ – Anthropocene, September 2024
'Reflections on a Waiting Room Lithograph' – Cordite Poetry Review, Issue 112: Treat, 2024
'Parturition Chairs I-V' – Island (Online), 2024
‘I Cutlass Spent Days With an X' – Cordite Poetry Review, Issue 111: Baby, 2024
'Ode to a BabyCentre Forum' – Rabbit, Issue 38: Archive, 2023
'Fool at Perigee' – Going Down Swinging, Hell & High Water, 2023
'Megafauna' – Westerly 68.1, 2023
'The Transfer' and 'Two Cities' – Poetry of Home: The Liquid Amber Prize Anthology, 2023
'Visions' – Plumwood Mountain Journal, Vol.10, No.01, 2023
'The Salience Network [Street Scenes, Heidelberg]' – Cordite Poetry Review, No Theme 12, 2023
'Night Notes' – Island, Issue 167, 2023
'The Human Body' – Island, Issue 167, 2023
'On googling saint olivia palermo [images]’ – Rabbit, Issue 36: Art, 2022
'The Green Wedge' – Island, Issue 166, 2022
'Personal Slalom' – Meanjin, Spring Issue, 2022
Awards
Longlisted for the 2024-2025 Local Word Poetry Prize | Shortlisted twice for the 2025 Robert Gray Prize for Poetry | Winner of the 2024 Venie Holmgren Environmental Poetry Prize | Shortlisted for the 2024 Wells International Poetry Competition | Shortlisted for the Westival International Poetry Competition 2024 | Longlisted for the University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor's International Poetry Prize 2023 | Second place in the 2023 Liquid Amber Press Poetry Prize | Shortlisted for the 2023 Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize | Longlisted for the SCWC 2023 Poetry Award | Longlisted for the 2023 Peter Porter Poetry Prize | Winner in two categories of the 2022 Queensland Regional Arts Awards (QRAA) Ekphrasis Challenge | Shortlisted for the 2017 Nillumbik Ekphrasis Poetry Prize