Claire Gaskin is a Melbourne-based poet, and creative writing teacher and mentor.

Image credit: Michael Reynolds

Claire Gaskin has been writing and publishing her poetry extensively for over three decades. She holds a Master of Arts (Writing and Literature) from Deakin University, where she is currently completing her PhD.

Her first collection of poetry, A Snail in the Ear of the Buddha, was published by SOUP Publications in 1998. Claire’s next collection a bud, completed in the receipt of an Australia Council Literature Board grant for 2003, was released by John Leonard Press in 2006, and was shortlisted in the John Bray SA Festival Awards for Literature in 2008. In 2013 and 2021, Hunter Publishers published Paperweight and Eurydice Speaks respectively. Claire’s latest full-length collection is Ismene’s Survivable Resistance, published by Puncher & Wattmann in 2021.

Claire’s poetry has also been anthologised in Australian Poetry 2009, Motherlode, Australian Love Poems 2013, Best Australian Poems 2009, 2010, 2013 and in Contemporary Australian Poetry and Contemporary Australian Feminist Poetry. It also has been studied at universities and has been the subject of a Melbourne University Honours thesis.

Claire has been teaching poetry for over thirty years, and is also available as a mentor. Currently, she teaches poetry at the Centre for Adult Education (CAE) and creative writing classes at the Sandybeach Centre. Claire mentors for Australian Poetry and for Writers Victoria in Australia. She is also available for private mentoring via Zoom, email, phone and in-person.