Poet, Scholar, Writer
Shari Kocher
Shari Lynelle Kocher is an award winning Deaf Australian poet, fiction-writer, mentor and erstwhile therapist. She holds a BA from Flinders University, an MA and PhD in Creative Writing from Melbourne University, and a Diploma in Remedial Massage, as well as a Certificate in AUSLAN. Her interests include somatic education, verse novels, ecocritical and feminist poetics, First Nations Literatures and contemporary feminist fiction and non fiction.
Shari is the author of two poetry collections published by the acclaimed independent Australian press, Puncher & Wattmann: The Non-Sequitur of Snow (2015) and Foxstruck and Other Collisions (2021). The former was shortlisted for the FAW Anne Elder Award (2015) and the latter was Highly Commended at the NSW Premier’s Literature Awards in the Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize (2022). Widely anthologized in Australia and elsewhere, including in Best Australian Poems 2021, 2016, 2013, Cordite Poetry Review, Meanjin, Overland, Plumwood Mountain, Southerly and Westerly, among others, Shari’s work has won or been shortlisted for numerous accolades, including the Blue Knot Foundation Award (2021), the Peter Steele Poetry Award (2019) and the University of Canberra Health Poetry Prize in (2016).
Her current creative directions include a new poetry collection and a book of short fiction, in tandem. The poetry combines ekphrastic with ecofeminist approaches, while the book of short fiction explores writing that has evolved through awareness through movement techniques as an integral methodology in the creative process.
Shari lives and writes and rests as a guest on the unceded lands of the Dja Dja Wurrung peoples in Central Victoria (Australia) where she pays tribute to past, present and future community and to the ancestors and keepers of Bunjil’s law.
