Heather Taylor-Johnson

Heather Taylor-Johnson lives and writes on Kaurna land near Port Adelaide. Her sixth book of poetry is Alternative Hollywood Ending, and she is the editor of Shaping the Fractured Self: Poetry of Chronic Illness and Pain. Recent shortlistings include the Red Room Poetry Fellowship and ABR’s Calibre Prize. Her novel Jean Harley was Here was shortlisted for the Readings Prize for New Fiction, and she’s the 2022 winner of Island’s Nonfiction Prize. She’s an honorary title holder at the J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice.

Articles by Heather Taylor-Johnson:

8 September 202312 September 2023 · Poetry

Poetry | Games

Heather Taylor-Johnson

Days pinch and lately I’ve noticed every time I look in the mirror I’m squinting—maybe it’s a grimace. Without trying I’ve mastered the façade of a Besser block threatened by a mallet, by which I mean maybe the world won’t kill me but it’ll definitely hurt and I’ve got to be ready.

Published in Overland Issue 251 Winter 2023 · Poetry

Nothing out of the ordinary

Heather Taylor-Johnson

We were not skydivers in the 1990s, I did not wear a cream crocheted bikini top, I was not in / love for the first time, we didn’t talk quietly amongst ourselves in large crowds about sex and / its dramas, we did not drink piss-weak beer, we did not pay $16 a jump and there was never a / DC-3 or a perfect sunset through its window, we never fell through snow.