About Melanie Jansen

A woman with long dark hair sitting at a wooden table, reading and writing in a notebook, with several books and a phone in front of her, in a plain white room.

Dr Melanie Jansen grew up in Logan City, and currently lives, writes, and practises medicine on Turrbal and Jagera land in Meanjin, Brisbane. She is a PhD candidate in philosophy at the University of Queensland and practises clinical ethics on the lands of the Yugambeh Language Speaking Nation, which spans from the Logan to the Tweed Rivers.

She has a Churchill Fellowship in clinical ethics and medical humanities. Melanie’s heritage is a rich tapestry of cultures, from Dutch Malaysia, Singapore and French Vietnam to Quebec, Ireland, Scotland, England, and Italy. Perhaps this is why she finds herself drawn to poetic forms from all around the globe. Writing poetry is an essential process for making sense of her work in intensive care, and of the life that keeps on living around it.

Woman sitting on a curved beige chair reading a book in a bright room with white walls and a window.

Her poems tell stories and engage the lyric, mirroring the movement of her life from the crisis, grief, and intensity of work, to reconnection with nature and family, and reflections on motherhood, friendship, and romantic love. Each part of life deepens and brightens the others, echoing through the skies, in childhood memories of the outback, and in the arms of silent trees. Melanie has had poems published in medical journals and poetry anthologies.

Her poem “Love Alone” received a commendation in the Hippocrates Poetry in Medicine Prize. “Some Days the Air is Soft” won one of the major prizes in the Grieve Competition. “All That Could Be Lost” is Melanie’s first poetry collection.