Melody Paloma is a writer and artist, currently based in Naarm/Melbourne. Her practice is interdisciplinary, spanning across poetry, essay, performance, collaboration, and video. Paloma’s work interrogates colonial aesthetics, infrastructure, and the politics of work.

 

Her first poetry collection, In Some Ways Dingo, was published with Rabbit in 2017. Over the course of 2018 she produced Some Days, a durational chapbook-length work published by Stale Objects dePress and performed in 2019 with Liquid Architecture. Melody is currently working on her first novel titled, The Centre. 

​

Her poetry and criticism have been published widely. Among others, her work has appeared in Cordite Poetry Review, Overland, Rabbit, Plumwood Mountain, un Magazine, Recess, The Suburban Review, Meanjin and Australian Poetry Journal. Her video work Kitsch Sites was a finalist in The 2023 Churchie Emerging Art Prize and was shown at the Institute of Modern Art in Meanjin. Iterations of this work were also shown in Naarm at KINGS gallery and Composite. 

 

She has been awarded the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize, as well as shortlisted for the Mascara Literary Review Avant-Garde Awards and Overland’s Fair Australia Prize. She completed her MFA at UNSW in 2024, and also holds a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing (Hons) from RMIT.