Before I started writing for children, I was a poet. I think I’ll always write poetry, no matter what else I do, and am always pleased when I can bring some sort of poetic sensibility to my prose. I’ve published poems in a range of literary journals and Cleanskin is my first collection.

Cleanskin was published by The Westerly Centre as part of ArtsWA’s “A Few New Words” initiative for emerging West Australian poets. It consists of 24 pages of poems, mostly new work, and a CD of me reading and discussing some of the poems, which was a lot of fun to do. Copies went out to Westerly subscribers with the 2008 issue, and can be purchased directly from me at a cost of $9.95 plus postage.

My poetry is aimed at adults but I do draw on some of this material in conducting high-school poetry workshops; you can read samples of my work here.

This is the blurb, from Professor Dennis Haskell:

Megan McKinlay’s first collection of poems ranges widely over subject and tone, from the witty mockery of herself and her publisher in “Spoken Word Blues” to the maternal concern of “Travels Without My Daughter”. Cleanskin introduces an effervescent, intelligent voice into West Australian and Australian poetry, one which plays with imagery and firm statement in exploring the relationship between time past and time present and a contemporary balance between uncertainties and certainty. Here is a poetry that seeks ends, but without any sense of things ever ending.