Demon Lover : Gwen Harwood single work   biography  
Issue Details: First known date: 2018... 2018 Demon Lover : Gwen Harwood
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

Gwen Harwood's most direct account of the development of her writing ambitions appears in Blessed City, a selection of letters she wrote in wartime Brisbane when she was in her early twenties to Tony Riddell, a new friend on active service in the navy. At the time, she was not a poet — far from it. She was working in the War Damage Commission, a public service institution set up to provide insurance against possible damage resulting from World War H. She found the organisation ludicrous in every aspect, from its aims to its processes to its earnest employees, and in a spirit half of mischief, half of outrage, she began a one-person campaign of mocking, corrupting and destabilising it. Her behaviour was extraordinary. She developed an impenetrable filing system, explicable to no one but herself. She inserted made-up people into the official records. She dedicated long hours at her desk to cutting out cardboard animals and writing private letters. She even staged elaborate phone conversations in German with imaginary interlocutors. Many yeas later she would tell a friend that she could not imagine how she was not fired, or at least moved on.  (Introduction)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon A Free Flame : Australian Women Writers and Vocation in the Twentieth Century Ann-Marie Priest , Crawley : UWA Publishing , 2018 12178428 2018 multi chapter work biography

    ''I need to be a writer,' Ruth Park told her future husband, D'Arcy Niland, on the eve of their marriage. 'That's what I need from life.'

    'She was not the only one. At a time when women were considered incapable of being 'real' artists, a number of precocious girls in Australian cities were weighing their chances and laying their plans.

    'A Free Flame explores the lives of four such women, Gwen Harwood, Dorothy Hewett, Christina Stead and Ruth Park, each of whom went on to become a notable Australian writer.

    'They were very different women from very different backgrounds, but they shared a sense of urgency around their vocation - their 'need' to be a writer - that would not let them rest.

    'Weaving biography, literary criticism and cultural history, this book looks at the ways in which these women laid siege to the artist's identity, and ultimately remade it in their own image.' (Publication summary)

    Crawley : UWA Publishing , 2018
Last amended 19 Apr 2018 06:39:19
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