Cirrus@Austlit

'It’s a great honour for me to be asked to give this memorial lecture for Randolph Stow. Thanks to the Westerly Centre and the Festival for inviting me. Stow’s writing has been a part of my life since my early twenties, when I was given the Penguin To the Islands (1962) as a birthday present. I didn’t know then that when Stow wrote it he was the same age as me reading it, or that it was his third published novel. After that, I read The Merry-go-Round in the Sea (1965) and Tourmaline (1963). Then in my early years here at the University of Western Australia (UWA) I first read two more: Visitants (1979) and The Girl Green as Elderflower (1980). Quite a few years later, after many re-readings, I think of Stow as a great artist, a poet amongst the English-language novelists of his time.' (Introduction)