Carcanet Press - Mappings of the Plane

Description
Excerpt
Author
Contents
Awards
Reviews

Language is not a perfect game,
and if it were, how could we play?
The world's more than the sum of things
like moon, sky, centre, body, bed,
as all the singing masters know.

from 'Thought is Surrounded by a Halo' by Gwen Harwood

Gwen Harwood (1920-1995) is one of the best loved Australian poets of the twentieth century - and a fierce prankster, who published poems under half-a-dozen names and identities. By turns poignant, sensuous and mischievous, passionately musical, her poetry is marked by sure intelligence and a quicksilver, anti-authoritarian wit.

This new selection of her poetry from 1943 to her death makes the full range of the work accessible for the first time to poetry-lovers in the northern hemisphere. With an introduction by the leading Harwood critic Gregory Kratzmann and the Australian poet Chris Wallace-Crabbe, who corresponded with Harwood, the selection includes hitherto little-known work along with poems which have become part of the central canon of Australian poetry.

Contents

Introduction

from Poems (1963)

Alter Ego
At the Water's Edge
The Glass Jar
A Postcard
'I am the Captain of My Soul'
The Waldstein
Prize-Giving
Boundary Conditions
Triste, Triste
In the Park
O Could One Write As One Makes Love

from Poems/Volume Two (1968)

At the Arts Club
Ebb- tide
Burning Sappho
In Brisbane
Estuary
Alla Siciliana
New Music
To A.D. Hope

from Poems 1969-1974

Dust to Dust
An Impromptu for Ann Jennings
The Violets
At Mornington
David's Harp
Carnal Knowledge I
Carnal Knowledge II
Night Thoughts: Baby & Demon
Meditation on Wyatt II
'Thought Is Surrounded by a Halo'
Father and Child

from The Lion's Bride (1981)

The Lion's Bride
Mappings of the Plane
Evening, Oyster Cove
Wittgenstein and Engelmann
A Quartet for Dorothy Hewett
'Let Sappho Have the Singing Head'
A Valediction
A Little Night Music
The Sea Anemones
Death Has No Features of His Own
A Scattering of Ashes
Dialogue
Mother Who Gave Me Life

from Bone Scan (1988)

Class of 1927
Bone Scan
I.M. Philip Larkin
The Sun Descending
Schrodinger's Cat Preaches to the Mice
Night and Dreams
Cups
1945
Forty Years On
Sunset, Oyster Cove
Mid-Channel
Pastorals

from The Present Tense (1995)

Songs of Eve I
To Music
Midwinter Rainbow
The Owl and the Pussycat Baudelaire Rock
from Collected Poems 1943–1995
(Formerly uncollected poems)
The Dead Gums
Water-Music
Last Meeting
'Can These Bones Live?'
The Speed of Light
Eloisa to Abelard
Abelard to Eloisa
Poet and Peasant
Frog Prince
Emporium
Hyacinth
' "Wolfgang," said father Leopold'
In Memoriam Sela Trau
Late Works

Two poems by Alan Carvosso (Uncollected)

O Sleep, why dost thou leave me?
On Wings of Song

Gwen Harwood

Gwen Harwood was born in 1920 in Queensland, Australia and brought up in Brisbane, where she completed a music teacher's diploma. After her marriage in 1945 she moved to Hobart, Tasmania, where her husband held an academic position, and where she developed her interest in the works of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Her ... read more

Greg Kratzmann

Gregory Kratzmann, formerly Associate Professor of English at La Trobe University, is the editor of A Steady Storm of Correspondence: Selected Letters of Gwen Harwood 1943-1995 (UQP, 2001) and with Alison Hoddinott, Gwen Harwood: Collected Poems 1943-1995 (UQP, 2003). He has written extensively in the areas of Australian literature and English ... read more

Chris Wallace-Crabbe

Chris Wallace-Crabbe is a leading Australian poet and essayist, with a special interest in the visual arts. He has published more than twenty collections of poetry, including Telling a Hawk from a Handsaw (Carcanet) and Afternoon in the Central Nervous System (Braziller, NY). His New and Selected Poems was published by ... read more

Awards won by Chris Wallace-Crabbe Short-listed, 2019 Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry in the NSW Premier's Literature Awards (Rondo)

Praise for Chris Wallace-Crabbe 'One constant of Chris Wallace-Crabbe's poetry has been his lexical range, his zest for injecting the demotic into his work. Wallace-Crabbe's poetry gambols about in the whole gamut of language's expressive possibilities'

Mark Prendergast, Tears in the Fence, no.70, 2019. pp. 132-137

'Wallace-Crabbe may be in love with language, especially the colloquial, the quirky and the idiosyncratic, but he also has "something to say". Rondo is rich in elegy and acknowledgement.'
Geoff Page, Sydney Morning Herald
'Prefacing one of his new poems, Wallace-Crabbe quotes D. H. Lawrence: "You just walk out of the world and into Australia." Here it is the other way round. You walk out of a Wallace-Crabbe poem and into the world.'
Alastair Niven 'A witty, endearingly slangy, yet unostentatiously philosophical Australian poet'.
Times Literary Supplement 'His allies are words and he uses them with the care of a surgeon and the flair of a conjuror.'
Peter Porter 'Wallace-Crabbe engages the most serious subjects in a frame of mind at once vulnerable and humorous. His personae may be shackled to the mast of slang, conceit, and bathos, but the song of the Siren is nevertheless nobly clear in these poems.'
Mary Kinzie, Poetry (Chicago) 'There is certainly an immense and joyous energy in the book and it mixes intellectual experience of excitement and doubt with personal experience of exaltation tinged by reminders.. of mortalily.'
Martin Duwell, The Australian '...in his valuing of both the aesthetic and the ordinary as the realms of humanity, he always reminds us - despite what the end has to offer us all - of a different kind of weather, one where, even as darkness is falling, ''the lit clouds yet / sail sweetly over us / inhabiting a daylight of their own''.'
David McCooey, Sydney Morning Herald '...in his valuing of both the aesthetic and the ordinary as the realms of humanity, he always reminds us - despite what the end has to offer us all - of a different kind of weather, one where, even as darkness is falling, ''the lit clouds yet / sail sweetly over us / inhabiting a daylight of their own''.'
David McCooey, Sydney Morning Herald

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Mappings of the Plane New Selected Poems Gwen Harwood Edited by Greg Kratzmann and Chris Wallace-Crabbe 10% off eBook (EPUB) Categories: 20th Century, 21st Century, Australian, Women Imprint: Fyfield Books Publisher: Carcanet Press Available as: Paperback (232 pages) (Pub. May 2009) 9781847770424 Out of Stock eBook (EPUB) Needs ADE! (Pub. May 2009) 9781847778994 £18.95 £17.05 To use the EPUB version, you will need to have Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) installed on your device. You can find out more at https://www.adobe.com/uk/solutions/ebook/digital-editions.html. Please do not purchase this version if you do not have and are not prepared to install, Adobe Digital Editions. Description Excerpt Author Contents Awards Reviews Language is not a perfect game, and if it were, how could we play? The world's more than the sum of things like moon, sky, centre, body, bed, as all the singing masters know. from 'Thought is Surrounded by a Halo' by Gwen Harwood Gwen Harwood (1920-1995) is one of the best loved Australian poets of the twentieth century - and a fierce prankster, who published poems under half-a-dozen names and identities. By turns poignant, sensuous and mischievous, passionately musical, her poetry is marked by sure intelligence and a quicksilver, anti-authoritarian wit. This new selection of her poetry from 1943 to her death makes the full range of the work accessible for the first time to poetry-lovers in the northern hemisphere. With an introduction by the leading Harwood critic Gregory Kratzmann and the Australian poet Chris Wallace-Crabbe, who corresponded with Harwood, the selection includes hitherto little-known work along with poems which have become part of the central canon of Australian poetry. Contents Introduction from Poems (1963) Alter Ego At the Water's Edge The Glass Jar A Postcard 'I am the Captain of My Soul' The Waldstein Prize-Giving Boundary Conditions Triste, Triste In the Park O Could One Write As One Makes Love from Poems/Volume Two (1968) At the Arts Club Ebb- tide Burning Sappho In Brisbane Estuary Alla Siciliana New Music To A.D. Hope from Poems 1969-1974 Dust to Dust An Impromptu for Ann Jennings The Violets At Mornington David's Harp Carnal Knowledge I Carnal Knowledge II Night Thoughts: Baby & Demon Meditation on Wyatt II 'Thought Is Surrounded by a Halo' Father and Child from The Lion's Bride (1981) The Lion's Bride Mappings of the Plane Evening, Oyster Cove Wittgenstein and Engelmann A Quartet for Dorothy Hewett 'Let Sappho Have the Singing Head' A Valediction A Little Night Music The Sea Anemones Death Has No Features of His Own A Scattering of Ashes Dialogue Mother Who Gave Me Life from Bone Scan (1988) Class of 1927 Bone Scan I.M. Philip Larkin The Sun Descending Schrodinger's Cat Preaches to the Mice Night and Dreams Cups 1945 Forty Years On Sunset, Oyster Cove Mid-Channel Pastorals from The Present Tense (1995) Songs of Eve I To Music Midwinter Rainbow The Owl and the Pussycat Baudelaire Rock from Collected Poems 1943–1995 (Formerly uncollected poems) The Dead Gums Water-Music Last Meeting 'Can These Bones Live?' The Speed of Light Eloisa to Abelard Abelard to Eloisa Poet and Peasant Frog Prince Emporium Hyacinth ' "Wolfgang," said father Leopold' In Memoriam Sela Trau Late Works Two poems by Alan Carvosso (Uncollected) O Sleep, why dost thou leave me? On Wings of Song Gwen Harwood Gwen Harwood was born in 1920 in Queensland, Australia and brought up in Brisbane, where she completed a music teacher's diploma. After her marriage in 1945 she moved to Hobart, Tasmania, where her husband held an academic position, and where she developed her interest in the works of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Her ... read more Greg Kratzmann Gregory Kratzmann, formerly Associate Professor of English at La Trobe University, is the editor of A Steady Storm of Correspondence: Selected Letters of Gwen Harwood 1943-1995 (UQP, 2001) and with Alison Hoddinott, Gwen Harwood: Collected Poems 1943-1995 (UQP, 2003). He has written extensively in the areas of Australian literature and English ... read more Chris Wallace-Crabbe Chris Wallace-Crabbe is a leading Australian poet and essayist, with a special interest in the visual arts. He has published more than twenty collections of poetry, including Telling a Hawk from a Handsaw (Carcanet) and Afternoon in the Central Nervous System (Braziller, NY). His New and Selected Poems was published by ... read more Awards won by Chris Wallace-Crabbe Short-listed, 2019 Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry in the NSW Premier's Literature Awards (Rondo) Praise for Chris Wallace-Crabbe 'One constant of Chris Wallace-Crabbe's poetry has been his lexical range, his zest for injecting the demotic into his work. Wallace-Crabbe's poetry gambols about in the whole gamut of language's expressive possibilities' Mark Prendergast, Tears in the Fence, no.70, 2019. pp. 132-137 'Wallace-Crabbe may be in love with language, especially the colloquial, the quirky and the idiosyncratic, but he also has "something to say". Rondo is rich in elegy and acknowledgement.' Geoff Page, Sydney Morning Herald 'Prefacing one of his new poems, Wallace-Crabbe quotes D. H. Lawrence: "You just walk out of the world and into Australia." Here it is the other way round. You walk out of a Wallace-Crabbe poem and into the world.' Alastair Niven 'A witty, endearingly slangy, yet unostentatiously philosophical Australian poet'. Times Literary Supplement 'His allies are words and he uses them with the care of a surgeon and the flair of a conjuror.' Peter Porter 'Wallace-Crabbe engages the most serious subjects in a frame of mind at once vulnerable and humorous. His personae may be shackled to the mast of slang, conceit, and bathos, but the song of the Siren is nevertheless nobly clear in these poems.' Mary Kinzie, Poetry (Chicago) 'There is certainly an immense and joyous energy in the book and it mixes intellectual experience of excitement and doubt with personal experience of exaltation tinged by reminders.. of mortalily.' Martin Duwell, The Australian '...in his valuing of both the aesthetic and the ordinary as the realms of humanity, he always reminds us - despite what the end has to offer us all - of a different kind of weather, one where, even as darkness is falling, ''the lit clouds yet / sail sweetly over us / inhabiting a daylight of their own''.' David McCooey, Sydney Morning Herald '...in his valuing of both the aesthetic and the ordinary as the realms of humanity, he always reminds us - despite what the end has to offer us all - of a different kind of weather, one where, even as darkness is falling, ''the lit clouds yet / sail sweetly over us / inhabiting a daylight of their own''.' David McCooey, Sydney Morning Herald You might also be interested in: Telling a Hawk from a Handsaw Chris Wallace-Crabbe	Share this... Quick Links Carcanet Poetry Carcanet Classics Carcanet Fiction Carcanet Film Lives and Letters PN Review Video Carcanet Celebrates 50 Years! 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Mappings of the Plane

New Selected Poems

Gwen Harwood

Edited by Greg Kratzmann and Chris Wallace-Crabbe