Cirrus@Austlit

'This essay examines long poems by contemporary women poets that represent examples of 'poetic biography,' to consider the diversity of ways in which feminist poets are writing/documenting the lives of historical figures. I am chiefly concerned with investigating the potential for poetry to expand the field of biographical writing in relation to the female historical voice (as both the writer and the written).' (Publication abstract)

'Upon his death in 1973, Francis Webb was eulogized by a young Les Murray as “a master of last lines, of last stanzas and final phrases.” Shortly after his first collection, A Drum for Ben Boyd (1948), Webb experienced his first bouts of mental illness which, while limiting his freedom, also led to a series of extraordinary verse biographies of the saintly, the tyrannical, the artistic and the institutionalized which few Australian poets have been able to match.' (Publication abstract)