sharehouse | Zenobia Frost

Best of Australian Poems 2023 kindly included my poem ‘For Exodus‘, which was shortlisted in the 2023 Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize and subsequently published in Island.

The Suburban Review commissioned HOUSING SIMULATOR 2023, a piece of digital lit the editors described as: ‘a hilarious interactive work with a keen sense of tragedy.’ (Thanks, eds!) It has just popped out into the world at the start of 2024:

_{‘Apply for your nightmare rental or save for the distant dream of a deposit — just don’t have a pet, or an insistence on functional plumbing.’}

HOUSING SIM 2023 built on work begun with the support of The Lord Mayor’s Young and Emerging Artists Fellowships, an initiative of Brisbane City Council, which also enabled me to spend a week in Katoomba writing/reading/walking (down and, worse, UP some Very Giant Stairs), and — most wonderfully — to engage Felicity Plunkett’s expert editing (and mentoring) eyes on some new work. ♡

The embargo has now lifted on my 2019 Master’s thesis: “According to our bond”: The poetics of share-house place attachment in Brisbane. Sarah Holland-Batt and Rohan Wilson supervised this MPhil by Creative Work, which resulted in my Cordite poetry collection, After the Demolition.

In January, we made the big move over the hill from, er, Toowong to Bardon. Our home had been a huge sharehouse we established with friends; three years later, it was a mould mansion we were ready to leave. Still, the day the real estate put up the sign, we felt a bit like our house had turned around and told us she was planning to dump us anyway. Fair enough, I suppose.

Today I set up a facebook page to divide up my public poeting and private grumpy-cat-posting (in so far as those two things can be separated). Now I’ve cross-posted that news everywhere, I’ll shut up about it. Exciting chapbook news coming soon. Thank you for following. :)

Moving

In the end,
it’s like clearing a hotel room:

the twice-over sweep of bare cupboards,
claiming the shower’s last piece of soap
and counting keys, you drive
away with your last look.

You will line up
your toothbrushes
in the habit of a new bathroom.

But when your nose follows
its old tricks, driving you back,
and you see the sign gone
from the fence post, you realise
you scrubbed yourself out
of that ghosting house.

And it just moved on without you.