Blue Bottle Journal

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Blue Bottle Journal

Online poetry journal for words with sting 🪼

04/11/2025

We're beyond thrilled to bring you this new work from a local friend and poetry powerhouse, Rebecca jessen 🔥

Rebecca Jessen (she/her) is a timeless boi. a linen daddy. a comet trail. a groin anomaly. a body that is a bridge. a moonstruck adolescent. an incomplete list poem 👀

Jessen’s poetry collection Ask Me About the Future (UQP, 2020) was shortlisted for the 2021 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Poetry, the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry and Commended for the Anne Elder Award 👏

Hop online to read Bec's poem in full and stay tuned for more poetry from us in the backend of this year ✨

www.bluebottlejournal.com/home/nightswimming

23/08/2025

A surreal, ethereal exploration of life and death with a stirring, hooking title, please welcome this new work from CJ Vallis 🩵

C. J. Vallis is a writer and educator on Wangal land. She won the 2019 UTS Writing Anthology prize. Her flash fiction was runner-up in the Byron Writers 2019 competition, and she has been longlisted for the Joanne Burns and Microflix Writing Awards. She's hoping to publish a novel soon 📚

We're so thrilled to be publishing new work in Blue Bottle again. Check it out online now! 👀

www.bluebottlejournal.com/home/dont-be-long-in-a-childrens-cancer-ward

03/06/2025

We're very excited to share this eery, sub-nautical poem from Scott-Patrick Mitchell as their second Blue Bottle outing 🩵

Scott-Patrick Mitchell was the recipient of the 2022 Red Room Poetry Fellowship and the 2023 XYZ Prize for Innovation in Spoken Word. Their debut poetry collection Clean (Upswell Publishing, 2022) was shortlisted for The Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, The WA Premier’s Book Awards and The Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards 📚

When we first published SPM back in late 2021, their debut collection hadn't yet been released. It feels very fitting to publish them again now after reading and loving 'Clean' in all of its q***r glory 👏🎉

www.bluebottlejournal.com/home/thalassophobia

22/03/2025

Super colourful, sensory-rich work from Elspeth Findlay in our journal today, more great bird poetry! 👏

Dwelling in community in the Northern Rivers of NSW, Elspeth Findlay’s poetry and prose burrows into live-wild and loving cultures, inciting radical metamorphosis needed in these incendiary times. Published in the Northerly, Coastlines, Emergent Literary Journal, Poetry for the Planet anthology, it also tours with the Bimblebox 153 Birds exhibition. Her Fiction ‘The Diviner’ is in Jacaranda and won the National Campus Writing Prize. Her first poetry collection was launched by Dangerously Poetic Press in October 2024.

In a Blue Bottle first, this is a reworked version of a poem Elspeth previously published in her debut collection. She really wanted to see this version out in the world and we couldn't agree more! 🩵

www.bluebottlejournal.com/home/the-celebrant

04/03/2025

We're hunkering down for hurricane weather here in Meanjin with this vivid, surreal piece by Christian Ward ☺️

Christian Ward is a UK-based poet, with recent work in Southword, Ragaire, Okay Donkey, and Roi Faineant. Longlisted for the 2023 National Poetry Competition (UK), he won a number of competitions in 2024, including the Maria Edgeworth, Pen to Print, London Independent Story Prize and the Shahidah Janjua Poetry Competition 👀

"(I mistook) a cuttlefish for poetry" is truly one of the most brilliant lines we've ever published and it was an absolute joy to find this visual for the piece 🦉

www.bluebottlejournal.com/home/substitutes

07/02/2025

We've got a brand new poem up in the journal now from a lovely emerging poet out of NSW, Reilly Loughlin 💌

Reilly Loughlin was raised in the Northern Rivers in NSW, and recently completed her Bachelor of Writing at UQ. You can find her in UQ’s Exordium issue 11, arguing the merits of fanfiction, or in Jacaranda Journal edition 11.2. She enjoys wooden floorboards, pelicans, and hosting dinners for her friends 🫶

Anyone who enjoys pelicans is a friend of ours 😂

http://www.bluebottlejournal.com/home/these-our-actors

21/01/2025

It's Mark's second outing with Blue Bottle! His first poem this time last year was about snow, so it's only fitting this piece is full of fire and heat 🔥

Mark O’Flynn’s novel The Last Days of Ava Langdon (UQP) was short listed for the Miles Franklin Award, 2017, the Prime Minister’s Literary Award as well as winning the Voss Literary Award, 2017. His most recent collection of poetry is Undercoat (Liquid Amber Press, 2022) ⭐

Check out Mark's finely polished piece online now! The 'air's dirty paragraph' was a particular thrill 👏

www.bluebottlejournal.com/home/cockatoos-after-fire

18/01/2025

We're bringing this one to you late tonight as we've been wrapped up today in hosting a fabulous in-person event at Can You Keep A Secret ? 🩵 Please welcome Leni 👏

Leni Shilton is a poet and verse novelist. Her book Walking with camels won the 2020 NT Chief Ministers Book Award. Leni’s poetry work appears in journals and anthologies, and she judged the 2020 Stella Prize. After many years in Mparntwe | Alice Springs, she now lives on Dja Dja Wurrung country 🥰

Leni is another amazing human we rubbed shoulders with at Red Dirt Poetry Festival last year. It's no coincidence we've published so many friends from that time 🩵

www.bluebottlejournal.com/home/painting-the-past

13/01/2025

We've been overwhelmed by high calibre work lately and Allison Camp has stunned us with these two gems 💎

Allison Camp (she/her) is a Washington State native now living and working in North Carolina. She is a scientist by training and has a deep affinity for biology and the fascinating details that abound in nature. Connect with her on Substack: https://allisoncamp.substack.com/ or Instagram: .curiosity ⚡

Savour these slick, highly detailed poems on death and decomposition. We're so lucky to be sharing such top notch international talent 🩵👏

www.bluebottlejournal.com/home/two-poems1193034

06/01/2025

It is a pleasure and a privilege to bring you our first published poem of 2025 from the wonderful Paris Rosemont 🧡

Paris Rosemont is the author of Banana Girl (WestWords, 2023), shortlisted for the Association for the Study of Australian Literature’s 2024 Mary Gilmore Award for a first volume of poetry. Her second collection, Barefoot Poetess, is due for release in early 2025. Paris may be found at www.parisrosemont.com 👏

Whether on the page or the stage, Paris rocks her erotic, fierce work oozing with style 🍊

www.bluebottlejournal.com/home/ceviche

12/10/2024

This tender, hyper-colourful portrayal of grief grabbed our attention and wouldn't let go 🩵

Kate worked as a counsellor in the NHS, then voluntarily in a hospice setting. She lives by the Atlantic in Cornwall, has been involved with XR, and is trying to learn BSL. (She dislikes abbreviations …) She feels writing itself is enough to quicken the blood — publication an affirming bonus 🙌

We especially loved Kate's final stanza, where her tactile-visual poem reaches its crescendo 👀

www.bluebottlejournal.com/home/a-brief-history-of-touch

28/09/2024

Blue Bottle is a journal that prides itself on rewarding perseverance and kindness. Glen Hunting has both of these in spades as a poet, human, and good egg 🩵

Glen Hunting is a poet living in Mparntwe on Arrernte country (Alice Springs, NT). Amongst other things, he writes about notions of home, belonging, and estrangement, as well as the hopes and frustrations surrounding allyship, reciprocity, and empowerment 👏

We're so pleased that Glen has cracked the Blue Bottle code (whatever that means), seeing his work develop and shine brighter with every new submission ✨

www.bluebottlejournal.com/home/marking-time

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