Ella Skilbeck-Porter, Crescentcrescent

‘Capturing interiority in all its idiosyncrasies, the fragmentation of time when a life enters the world or leaves it is an incredibly difficult thing to do; yet Ella achieves this, with poetic precision, and a distinctive voice that pushes form and thought on every page.’ 
IZZY ROBERTS-ORR

Ella Skilbeck-Porter’s second collection Crescentcrescent moves and shifts forms,
revolving around the space of the house and neighbouring streets, circling and orbiting interiority. The crescent and the movement of lunar phases repeat as twinned movements of birth and grief, speaking to the etymology of crescent, to ‘grow, develop, swell, increase in numbers.’ The shape of the crescent finds an echo in the  shape of the pregnant body and the poems traverse absence and presence, early years of parenthood and phenomenological notions of perception. The individual poems are observational and attentive; at times surreal in their use of dream imagery; and explore a subjective, relational frame. Early parenthood is imbued with psychological energy and embedded with chance and procedural and automatic methods of writing. There are moments of transformation, of shifting states, exemplified through the rotations between the sections and sequences: generative leaps that allow for formal play and continuation. In her second collection, Skilbeck-Porter continues the development of a poetics of no division, a form of contemporary Australian poetry that emphasises interconnection and interrelatedness and fluidity without hierarchy.

‘Formally daring, Skilbeck-Porter’s debut is a confident collection that moves elegantly and effortlessly through concrete and lyric poetry. Skilbeck-Porter has developed a poetics that feels truly new and invigorating, characterised by both an eye for intricacy and a steady, guiding formal hand. These Are Different Waters is a significant accomplishment in form, but more importantly, style.’  Anne Elder Award 2023 judges’ comments

Ella Skilbeck-Porter is a poet and visual poet living on unceded Wurundjeri Country in Naarm/Melbourne. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne where she is researching visual poetry. Her debut collection of poetry These are Different Waters (Vagabond Press, 2023) was shortlisted for the Mary Gilmore Award and the Helen Anne Bell Poetry Bequest and was highly commended in the Anne Elder Award. Her work has been widely published in journals and anthologies including Best of Australian Poems 2024, Living Systems: Poetry from Asia Pacific, HEAT, Rabbit, Going Down Swinging and Cordite Poetry Review.

Ella Skilbeck-Porter, Crescentcrescent
September 2026. 148mm x 210mm. 96pp.
ISBN 978-1-925735-91-8

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.