12/24/2023 0 Comments Whisperings an anthology of poetry![]() ![]() ![]() Kathie Cochrane and Judith Wright, Oodgeroo (1994, on Oodgeroo Noonuccal).Deborah Fitzgerald, Her sunburnt country: The extraordinary literary life of Dorothea McKellar (2023, available for pre-order): apparently “the first definitive biography” of the author of one of Australia’s most favourite poems.Gregory Bryan, Mates: The friendship that sustained Henry Lawson and Colin Roderick, Henry Lawson: A life (1999).Wilde, Courage, a grace: A biography of Dame Mary Gilmore (1985) Phillip Buttress, An unsentimental bloke the life and work of C.J.Cathy Perkins, The shelf life of Zora Cross (2019, on my TBR): on poet and journalist Cross, who could be provocative and should, I think, be better known than she is.I haven’t read this but I am hoping to do a post on him next week, now that I’m on a Poetry Month roll. Brady (2018): I had never heard of Edwin Brady (as a poet or otherwise) when this turned up in my search, but he was apparently “a socialist and bohemian who knew Henry Lawson and many other well-known writers”. Sarah Mirams, Coasts of dream: A biography of E.J.One of the judges, Suzanne Falkiner, says Steger, put it this way: Not Priest, though, for which we should be grateful. Two would-be biographers, Alison Hoddinott and the late Gregory Kratzmann, who edited her collected poems, were, he explains, defeated by the task. Steger explains that “Harwood’s was a complex life and Priest had to persevere to sort it all out”. As a woman poet, she had to fight hard for recognition by the male-dominated publishing world. Harwood, some of you might remember, was one of Edwina Preston’s inspirations for her novel Bad art mother ( my review). In his latest emailed newsletter, Jason Steger, Literary Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, writes about this year’s National Biography Award winner, Ann-Marie Priest’s, My tongue is my own: A life of Gwen Harwood (2020). ![]() In other words, it seemed appropriate to share some biographies of Australian poets, on those writers, that is, for whom poetry was their main literary output. With this month being National Poetry Month and with, coincidentally, this year’s National Biography Award going to a biography of a poet, it seemed a match made in heaven. Eight years ago, I wrote a Monday Musings on Australian literary biographies, but the main focus there was on novelists. ![]()
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