The Infant Vine
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 sea dragon; 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 this collection, which explores caregiving and creativity in the context of global crises.
'In The Infant Vine, pregnancy, postpartum life and caregiving are inextricable from the contexts of creativity and ecological crisis. In the poet’s words, "the hard edge of a creative life is care—", and Isabella G. Mead shows herself to be a writer who cares profoundly for this world. Alert and curious, these exquisite poems form a language of remarkable movements and simultaneities, comprising clarity and complexity, precision and suggestion, tenderness and strength. Allusive and layered, spliced with humour and feeling, comfort and strangeness, Mead’s poetry illustrates with grace and fierce intelligence how "a poem is not a mirror — it responds".' – Jo Langdon
'Precise with detail and metaphor, these delightful poems are attentive to human and non-human bodies…they motivate courage and curiosity for the world to come' – Jessica L. Wilkinson
'A compelling new voice in Australian poetry' – Kate Middleton
Isabella G. Mead was born in Hobart in 1989 and grew up in Melbourne. She is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at Monash University and holds a BA from the University of Melbourne and an MA (Digital Humanities) from King’s College London. Her work has been published widely, including in Meanjin, Island, Westerly and Cordite Poetry Review. In 2023, she was shortlisted twice for the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize. She lives, works and raises her young family on unceded Wurundjeri land. The Infant Vine (UWA Publishing, July 2024) is her debut poetry collection.
