towards a grammar of being

Julie Waugh

With heartbreaking clarity, and using grammar as her springboard, Waugh leaps between/into buildings, stops for the death of a bee then soars over a fence and off the page before returning to a Lithgow childhood. Amidst the destruction,dignity and despair of our culpable world this book is a bell.
– Les Wicks

In the tradition of Dickinson’s letter to the world, Julie Waugh has dedicated herself to the poet’s scrupulous custom of reflection and self-examination. The result is this poetic self-portrait. What towards a grammar of being delivers, in its high intelligence and tender sensuality,
and in its inventive stream-of-verse episodes, is, quite simply, psychology, or what we used to call intuition. This is poetry for poetry lovers who remember when poetry had something to tell us about ourselves and about living the good life, and when reading poetry meant enjoying a
poetic experience.

– Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino, editor, eratio

Julie Waugh was born in the small coal mining town of Lithgow situated on the edge of the Blue Mountains in NSW. After training to be a registered nurse at the local hospital, she moved to Sydney and combined motherhood with studying for a BA at UNSW, majoring in psychology.

In Sydney she worked as a courier, secretary, venepuncturist, copywriter, nurse, freelance editor and spent five years as a medical writer for a publishing company.

Although she began to write poetry in her early twenties it wasn’t until later in life that she started writing again and at that stage completed a Master of Arts degree in creative writing at UNSW. Since then her poems have been published widely in Australia and overseas.

At present she lives and works in Belfast, Northern Ireland where she relocated in 2008 to be closer to her son and grandsons.