Jordie Albiston

Who is Jordie Albiston?

Jordie Albiston is a contemporary Australian poet and academic.

Jordie Albiston grew up in Melbourne, one of three or four children. She studied flute at the Victorian College of the Arts before completing a PhD in Literature. Her first collection of poems, Nervous Arcs, won the Mary Gilmore Award, received runner-up in the Anne Elder Award, and was shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Prize. Her next two books were documentary collections, respectively concerning the first European women in the Port Jackson and Botany Bay settlements, and Jean Lee, the last woman hanged in Australia.

Botany Bay Document was later transformed into a performance work entitled Dreaming Transportation: Voice Portraits of the First Women of White Settlement at Port Jackson by Andrée Greenwell. In 2003, the performance premiered at the Sydney Festival, and in 2004 was staged again at the Sydney Opera House featuring Deborah Conway.

In 2006, Jordie Albiston's biographical verse The Hanging of Jean Lee was used as the text for an opera created by Andrée Greenwell and Melbourne playwright Abe Pogos. Featuring Max Sharam, it was first staged at the Sydney Opera House, The Studio.