Q&A with Jax Bulstrode

Jax Bulstrode is a queer, chronically ill, and non-binary poet and artist practising in Naarm. Their work focuses on the queer gaze through the lens of intimacy and connection. You can find their words in Voiceworks, Cordite, Plumwood Mountain, and The Victorian Writer. Their debut poetry collection, cul-de-sac rabbits, will be published in 2024 with Revolutionaries Press.

‘Sweet Dreams’ felt revolutionary to me—in the way it gives thanks for a sick body, and finds such tenderness amidst the realities of living with chronic illness. Can you tell us more about where the inspiration for this poem came from?

That is such a sweet question. I think this poem started by playing around with the predict text function on my phone, you know the one that helps you write ‘I am almost home’ or ‘please pick up more Panadol’ when you are messaging someone. I like to just keep pressing the middle word and see where it takes me. I also really wanted to write a poem about being sick that wasn’t sad (not that those aren’t important) or a poem that wasn’t about the beginning of my health journey but rather where I am right now, in a place of acceptance and learning and knowing. I’m still sick but I can see the glimmering parts of life, or sometimes I can’t see them but I can sit in that feeling and know that they are possible.

‘So I’m up all night trying to stick the brightest star on the tip of my tongue. This is my soft apocalypse’. This poem perfectly balances hope, ‘brightest stars’, and the ways a body can defy our (or more often, society’s) expectations. How do you make space for both hope and ‘soft apocalypses’ in your writing?

I think a lot of my writing is manifestation work or affirmations or even prayers. A lot of the hope is actually me writing over and over again something that I want to believe, or that I want to be true to myself. Trying to balance the brightest star on my tongue I think is a way of saying that I want to hold the good things close even though they may feel out of reach. The soft apocalypse is my body, and waking up not knowing what my symptoms will be or how I will be able to function. A juxtaposition of an apocalypse being soft, or rather coming softly, I became this way softly and slowly, over time.

Your debut collection, cul-de-sac rabbits, is going to be out in the world soon! What has it been like to work on this project? And where else can we find more of your writing?

Working on cul-de-sac rabbits has been a project that has taken up the last 5 or so years of my life, it’s the project that I think I needed to create for myself. It’s a collection on chronic illness but also gender, sexuality, and being raised as a femme girl in suburbia. It’s a mixture of all the things that make up me as a person, I think it needed to be the first collection that I put out into the world. It’s going to be out actually very soon! You can find more of my writing on my Instagram @ jaxlb1234 or various other journals around the world. One day I hope you will be able to find my writing in your local library!

Alison J Barton

Alison J Barton’s poetry is widely published in Australian and international literary journals. Her work has been recognised in numerous prizes and Best of Australian Poems over several years. She was the inaugural winner of the 2023 University of Cambridge First Nations Writer-in-Residence Fellowship, and was granted places in several other residencies around the world. Her first full-length collection of poetry, Not Telling, was published by Puncher & Wattmann. She is Editor-in-Chief of The Suburban Review.