Chaotic Sunflower
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Poet. Storyteller. Advocate for the world we deserve.
The Story Behind the Words
I grew up watching Brisbane shift through seasons that couldn't quite make up their mind — humid summers that pressed down like a held breath, brief cool spells where the jacarandas made the whole city violet. Somewhere in that in-between, I started writing.
Chaotic Sunflower is the name I gave to the part of me that refuses to be tidy about it. The poetry here doesn't sit still. It moves through grief and joy and fury and wonder — often all at once. I write about the natural world, about bodies, about the specific ache of being young in a time when the planet is on fire and the systems meant to catch people keep dropping them.
Short stories let me go further — into other lives, other rooms, other kinds of silence. The novellas I'm working on are stranger still: somewhere between literary fiction and the kind of myth-making that happens when you stare at the Queensland sky long enough.
I believe writing is political whether we intend it to be or not. Every story makes a claim about whose life is worth following. I try to make mine matter.
Writing Toward a Better World
The writing doesn't exist in a vacuum. It grows from things I care about — deeply, sometimes painfully.
The Environment
Country matters. The bush fires, the bleached reefs, the rivers running wrong — these aren't abstract policy questions to me. They're landscapes I love, and they're in the poems. I try to write about the natural world with the tenderness and urgency it deserves.
Ending Homelessness
Homelessness is not inevitable — it's a choice we keep making as a society. I am frustrated by that choice, and I let that frustration live in the work. Some of the most important stories being told right now are the ones written by people who've been failed by the system. I want to be in conversation with those stories.
Mental Health
Writing has always been how I process. I think a lot about the gap between the mental health system we have and the one people actually need. Some of my most personal work lives here — in the space between asking for help and getting it, and in what it means to keep going anyway.
Australian Politics & Beyond
Local and global — the two don't separate cleanly. I care about what's happening in Canberra and I care about what's happening in the world. The work reflects both. Writing poetry about politics doesn't mean you have to be earnest about it — sometimes rage lands better as a punchline.
What You'll Find Here
Collections that move between the tender and the furious. Domestic, ecological, political — often all three. These poems ask to be read out loud.
Character-driven fiction that sits with people in difficult moments — not to resolve them, but to witness them. Often set in Queensland. Always honest.
The stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else — lines that arrived whole, observations that wanted to be short. Collected and shared.
Longer work in progress — stories with room to breathe. Somewhere between literary fiction and something harder to name. Watch this space.
Start Reading
Browse the full collection — poetry, short fiction, and more. Available as instant e-books or beautiful printed editions.