As If I’m Really There builds thematically and artistically on Emilie Collyer’s award-winning debut collection Do You Have Anything Less Domestic? This second collection digs deeply into Collyer’s avid feminine and feminist interest in the place of the body: what it feels like to have one, how bodies are gendered, assessed, analysed and valued, how the body of an artist and a body of creative work is forged.‘With a fierce, vulnerable, wayfaring intelligence, Emilie Collyer swerves and weaves through the thickets of bodies, gender, culture and influence like no-one else. As If I’m Really There is a breathtakingly daring and sensitising collection of poems.’ ANDY JACKSON‘In this, her follow-up collection to Do You Have Anything Less Domestic?, Collyer extends and deepens the formal and feminist boundaries of her work to impressive effect. This book roams far and wide, moving into the past, nudging the present and winking at the speculative. Pop culture, literary and theatrical works are all present in the heady, febrile swirl of lives examined.’ THUY ONEmilie Collyer lives on unceded Wurundjeri land, where she writes poetry, plays and prose.Her debut full-length poetry collection Do you have anything less domestic? (Vagabond Press 2022) won the inaugural Five Islands First Book Prize. She has been runner-up in the GwenHarwood Poetry Prize (2024) and shortlisted for the Newcastle Poetry Prize (2024) and the Judith Wright Poetry Prize (2025). Her poetry and essays are published across a wide range ofliterary and scholarly journals locally and internationally. Emilie’s plays include Contest, Dream Home and The Good Girl which has had multiple international productions. Her plays have wonand been nominated for numerous awards including the Theatre503 International PlaywritingAward (London), Queensland Premier’s Drama Award, Green Room Awards, George Fairfax,Patrick White and Malcolm Robertson. Emilie’s play Super was commissioned by Red StitchTheatre’s INK program and premiered in 2025.
