Joanne Burns

Joanne Burns (born 5 December 1945) is a contemporary Australian poet and prose writer, with a strong emphasis on performance in her work.

Biography

Joanne Burns grew up and lives in Sydney. She studied at the University of Sydney and has taught English and creative writing at secondary and tertiary levels in Australia and England. Her work hovers between poetry and prose, and often incorporates 'found writing' from newspapers and other everyday sources. In the 1980s she participated in the experimental writing group Sydney Women Writers' Workshop.

She has won or been shortlisted for poetry awards. Further, her work has appeared in several anthologies, including The Penguin Book of Australian Women Poets (1986), The Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry (1991), and The Oxford Book of Australian Women’s Verse (1995).

Her poems are studied in high schools and have been produced for radio and theatre.

Awards and Nominations Footnotes of a hammock, joint winner of the inaugural Judith Wright Award for a collection of poetry in the 2005 ACT Poetry Awards an illustrated history of diaries, shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry in the 2008 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards brush, winner of the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry in the 2016 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards apparently, shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry in the 2020 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards