Award-Winning Poet
Writer, Mentor and Maker
also known as Shari Kocher
The voice behind the words.
Shari Lynelle is a writer whose work moves between poetry, criticism, fieldwork and the gaps between fiction and non-fiction. Her practices explore feminist eco-critical orientations in tandem with a grounded awareness of differently abled and enabling sustainability, blending sensory astuteness with intellectual artistry. With a background in literary studies, a Masters degree and PhD. in Creative Writing, and multiple awards to her name, Shari’s practices are grounded in process, presence and creative exploration.
Shari Lynelle is a multifaceted Australian literary professional.
(aka Shari Kocher)
Shari’s work lives at the intersection of poetry, scholarship and creative practice. Whether on the page or in the field, her process is shaped by presence, intuition and a deep respect for language.
Shari’s vocation as a poet, writer, researcher and independent scholar sees her working flexibly in multiple modes. Her practice moves fluidly between disciplines, drawing on fieldwork, literary inquiry and a sensitivity to the textures of lived experience. Across each attentional field, she returns to language as a space for bewilderment, reflection and care — where writing is one of her many ways of being in the world.
Books
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Foxstruck and Other Collisions
Published 2021
Five years in the making and replete with a stunning swathe of prize-winning poems, Foxstruck and Other Collisions is a book about alchemy and heart country. 'It moves with great economy from a sense of struggle to an embrace of the world, and with sensuous delight. Its increasingly richly textured language is precise while retaining a sense of the elusive,’ write the judges of the inaugural University of Canberra Health Poetry Prize, of the poem ‘The Glimpse’. Structured in seven sections led by metal and mineral motifs, this collection reckons with the ongoing impacts of colonial legacies in relational fields both internalised and in motion. Its poetics pay witness to paradox, lacunae, and an animate grammar of possibility.
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The Non-Sequitur of Snow
Published 2015
The Non-Sequitur of Snow is a beautifully crafted and coherent collection that almost floats in its imaginative universe.'-- Anne Elvey and John di Mase.
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Lunette
Under Consideration
Lunette
Lunette is a collection of poetry that spans five years of working in ekphrastic and feminist modes while thinking about the formation and function of lunettes in arid and semi-arid desert zones.
This is also a book that wrestles with the shadowy, sensate gaps and trauma-knowledges inherent in a shared, but mostly unspoken, circulation of cultural memory and memory loss in temporal and familial lines grown uncanny.
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Sonqoqui
Seeking Publication
A poetic multi-layered biopic, part high-altitude adventure in verse novella form, part critique of sacrifice, this is a story that polyphonically imagines the lives and deaths of three Inca children who lived five hundred years ago. Politics and archaeology delver the unique contexts in which the children are now housed in the Museum of High Altitude Archaeology in Salta, Argentina. The evolution of this manuscript has been supported by the inauguration of the Peter Steele Poetry Prize.
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Hair on Fire
In Development
Sara Ahmed contends that ‘(f)eminism begins with sensation’ and Hair on Fire takes this starting point literally. Thisis a new book of discontinuous feminist fictions in short story form, which takes as its premise the application of awareness through movement techniques as applied to creative-writing in process, while asking feminist questions about what is found there.
Intuitive and often non-linear connections accrue between these fictions, which incrementally give rise to a darkly sparkling defiance, as well as coherence, within the mundane imaginings of an abortive, punitive, often ridiculous, imploding and exploding, patriarchal world on fire.
Poems
Poems span vast distances and time-travel in mysterious ways. Not all are caught inside the covers of books.
Fiction
Non-prosaic prose in various forms.
Publications
I started publishing before the digital revolution. Here is an incomplete vision board of what is where.
Criticism
Essays and reflections exploring literature, language and creative process from a poetic lens.
Audio
Recordings of Shari reading her own work — making poetry more accessible, embodied and alive.
Creative Practice
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Matter in the Making
A glimpse into the slow and attentive practices that nourish Shari’s creative life, including paper making, eco printing, gardening, walking poems and land care.
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Fieldwork and Writing Residencies
Writing in the field is writing on Country. Currently i am spending time as a grateful guest on Djaara Country. Residencies are gifted opportunities to immerse in the development of work elsewhere.
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Body Work
Shari brings a body-first approach to creativity through remedial massage and Sense Writing, blending movement and awareness to support sustainable creative flow.
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Mentoring
Shari brings decades of experience mentoring writers and creatives, offering astute, intuitive support from vision to completion.
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Manuscript Support
Shari offers thoughtful editorial support across genres, with experience spanning poetry, essays, life writing, and academic work.
For enquiries and invitations.
Contact Shari at sharilynelle09@gmail.com
Press Kit
Biographical Notes
Author photographed by Lee Illfield/Nabil Asakly: