Cirrus

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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Since its publication in 2003, the availability of Harwood’s Collected Poems 1943 – 1995 has allowed students and teachers to gain a deep understanding of her work, through the long view of its development over her life. Born in Brisbane in 1929, but living most of her adult life in Tasmania until her death in 1995, Harwood inhabited a number of identities that reflect the protean quality of her poetic personae. In the above quote, poet and critic John Kinsella describes the contradictions and surprises to be found in Harwood’s work, particularly its sometimes ‘savage’ manner and ‘horrific’ view of human nature. A famous example of these qualities is found in Harwood’s short poem, Suburban Sonnet.' (Introduction)

Notes

Epigraph: . . . [Harwood] was one of those poets I grew up with, care of my mother who taught Harwood’s poetry in high-school literature classes for decades . . . I don’t have a copy at hand, but if I recall correctly, it carried that wonderfully warm yet seemingly austere (to a fifteen-year-old boy) picture of her in a collared dress with page-boy hair looking as if she’d come out of a country Anglican choir. Then there were the poems, graceful and savage at once, clever and ‘sensual’. They seemed to allow place and human experience of place to commune, and to observe the potentially horrific outcomes . . . Poetry isn’t about comfort and conformity for me; it’s about disturbance and action. Harwood was always about action in her quiet (and sometimes quite rowdy and obsessive) ways. (Kinsella p. 12-13)