Joan Fleming: 2023 Early Summer Residency

Joan’s latest book is Song of Less (Cordite Books, 2022), a verse novel exploring ritual, taboo, and the limits of individualism in the ruins of ecological collapse. She is the author of the poetry collections The Same as Yes and Failed Love Poems (Te Herenga Waka Press), and the pamphlets Two Dreams In Which Things Are Taken (Duets) and Some People’s Favourites (Desperate Literature).

She holds a PhD in ethnopoetics from Monash University, and her manuscript Dirt was shortlisted for the Helen Anne Bell Poetry Bequest. Joan is a lecturer in creative writing for Massey University and lives in Pōneke Wellington.

As our 17th writer-in-residence, Joan is working on another poet’s novel. It’s a failed love story about the ways that women are lashed to their bodies.