Ashley Haywood is a writer whose creative and critical work often dwells in the art-science nexus.
My debut poetry collection Polyp (Vagabond Press, 2024) moves in the loops and flows of ecological systems, time-fullness and deep memory, making-with fossils, corals, seeds across the page-as-landscape. Polyp was Highly Commended in the 2024 Five Islands Prize.
I’m the inaugural recipient of The University of Queensland Fryer Library Creative Writing Fellowship (2017/18), thrice shortlisted in the Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize (2020 Runner-Up, 2021, 2022), and Category Winner in the QRAA Ekphrasis Challenge (2020).
I hold a PhD in Creative Research on signs, minds and creativity, or how to write like painting with my thesis titled Harlequin Blue and The Picasso Experiment (2015). I also hold First Class Honours degrees in Creative Writing (Southern Cross University) and Biological Sciences (Macquarie University).
My creative work has appeared in various places, including Best Australian Poems, Living Systems: Poetry from Asia Pacific, Australian Poetry Journal, Australian Poetry Anthology, Cordite Poetry Review, Meanjin, Southerly, AXON, Rabbit, Verity La, TEXT and Island/Islet. I’ve also performed and read my creative work in Australia and France, including at the World Science Festival Brisbane (2017). I was a finalist in the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award (2016), and highly commended in The Philip Bacon Ekphrasis Award (2016). You can find a list of my recent publications here.
I was born and raised on Cammeraygal Country, and have since lived between many cities and regions between Naarm and Magandjin (Meanjin), as well as overseas. I currently live and make in Kau-in Kau-in (Redcliffe, Moreton Bay) on Ningy Ningy and Kabi Kabi Lands, just north of Magandjin, with my partner and our five-year-old who keeps us curious. (If you’re here looking to know more about my creative therapy practice, please see over this way here.)
And you are always most welcome to get in touch.
