NLA image of person
Chris Wallace-Crabbe Chris Wallace-Crabbe i(A13617 works by) (a.k.a. Christopher Keith Wallace-Crabbe)
Also writes as: Gillian Bianchini
Born: Established: 1934 Richmond, East Melbourne - Richmond area, Melbourne, Victoria, ;
Gender: Male
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

Works By

Preview all
1 1 Dejection Ode Chris Wallace-Crabbe , single work poetry
1 Meditations Chris Wallace-Crabbe , single work poetry
1 Untitled Chris Wallace-Crabbe , single work review
— Review of Verse in Australia vol. [1] no. 1958 periodical issue poetry
1 Dispatches from a Civil Word World Chris Wallace-Crabbe , single work review
— Review of Charmed Lives Bruce Beaver , 1988 selected work poetry
1 ‘Menzies Biography Mystery’ : Robert Menzies and Political Biography as Political Intervention Chris Wallace-Crabbe , 2021 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Journal of Biography and History , August no. 5 2021; (p. 121-145)
'The silhouette of an unpublished biography of Australia’s longest-serving prime minister flashed briefly into public view when journalist Allan Dawes, 69 years old and in failing health, died in Melbourne in 1969. Dawes’s death brought to mind ‘a secret which has mystified politicians and writers for almost 20 years’, the Sydney Sunday Telegraph said, given the commissioning of the ‘distinguished newspaperman, poet and author’ in the early 1950s to write a biography of the then prime minister, Robert Menzies.1 A Sun News-Pictorial report outlined the Scotch College and University of Melbourne–educated Dawes’s career, beginning with the Melbourne Age in 1918, then the Sun and Daily Telegraph in Sydney, and the Argus and Star in Melbourne, before joining the Melbourne Herald during World War II where he was an acclaimed war correspondent.2 Dawes’s book Soldier Superb: The Australian Fights in New Guinea, with drawings by Russell Drysdale and official photographs, was published in 1943.3 After the war he wrote a regular column for the Herald and worked in public relations, while continuing to write more broadly; the Sun News-Pictorial noted that ‘hundreds of his short stories and verse’ were published over his lifetime.4 So Dawes was a seasoned journalist, an accomplished writer and experienced in public relations. A period from 1938 to 1941 working as a journalist in the public service in Canberra under the Lyons and Menzies governments gave him an insider perspective on the business of politics too. Dawes was the experienced, well-rounded author Robert Menzies turned to in 1950 to write a biography that could improve the prime minister’s standing among voters who stubbornly failed to warm to him. Menzies’s move was novel in Australia, which had no tradition of political biography as political intervention, in contrast to the United States where campaign biographies of presidential candidates were routine from the early nineteenth century onwards.5 Despite extensive work, the Menzies biography was never published. The reasons for this are contested.' 

 (Introduction)

1 Seasons in Rotation i "While hungry spring is doing all this", Chris Wallace-Crabbe , 2020 single work poetry
— Appears in: Antipodes , June vol. 34 no. 1 2020; (p. 39)
1 There Are Fields; There Is Wilderness i "There are fields; there is wilderness; there is a wall.", Chris Wallace-Crabbe , 2020 extract poetry
— Appears in: The Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry 2020; (p. 171)
1 In Their Fluent Passage i "Like clever, glimpsed sprinters", Chris Wallace-Crabbe , 2020 single work poetry
— Appears in: Eureka Street , 26 July vol. 30 no. 15 2020;
1 Organic Molecules i "Our galaxy has no point at all,", Chris Wallace-Crabbe , 2020 single work poetry
— Appears in: Eureka Street , 26 July vol. 30 no. 15 2020;
1 A Thousand Yarns and Snapshots – Why Poetry Matters during a Pandemic Chris Wallace-Crabbe , 2020 single work column
— Appears in: The Conversation , 20 May 2020;

'Why do we have the arts? Why do they seem to matter so much? It is all very well muttering something vague about eternal truths and spiritual values. Or even gesturing toward Bach and Leonardo da Vinci, along with our own Patrick White.'  (Introduction)

1 'We Play and Hope' i "We play because we kow-tow and are free;", Chris Wallace-Crabbe , 2020 single work poetry
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , April no. 420 2020;
1 That Pastoral Edge i "From just up here", Chris Wallace-Crabbe , 2020 single work poetry
— Appears in: Eureka Street , 23 February vol. 30 no. 4 2020;
1 Our Testimony i "Only", Chris Wallace-Crabbe , 2020 single work poetry
— Appears in: Eureka Street , 23 February vol. 30 no. 4 2020;
1 Part One i "Our story ravels in and outside time", Chris Wallace-Crabbe , 2019 single work poetry extract
— Appears in: Arts Features International : Under the Radar 2019; (p. 79)
1 y separately published work icon Solace : Poems from the 2019 ACU Prize for Poetry Chris Wallace-Crabbe (editor), Margot Hillel (editor), Carolyn Masel (editor), Melbourne : Australian Catholic University , 2019 18500362 2019 anthology poetry
1 Near Ferntree Gully i "Staring toward the stringy picture", Chris Wallace-Crabbe , 2019 single work poetry
— Appears in: Eureka Street , 17 November vol. 29 no. 23 2019; (p. 62-63)
1 Bastard Valerian i "An ample buzz of bees this year, thronging", Chris Wallace-Crabbe , 2019 single work poetry
— Appears in: Eureka Street , 17 November vol. 29 no. 23 2019; (p. 61-62)
1 Dingoes i "Through a drab-green social afternoon", Chris Wallace-Crabbe , 2019 single work poetry
— Appears in: Eureka Street , 17 November vol. 29 no. 23 2019; (p. 61)
1 Trousers i "Two mildly pressed tubes have been constructed of closewoven fabric,", Chris Wallace-Crabbe , 2019 single work poetry
— Appears in: Westerly , vol. 64 no. 1 2019; (p. 76)
1 2 y separately published work icon Rondo Chris Wallace-Crabbe , Manchester : Carcanet , 2018 15629710 2018 selected work poetry

'Chris Wallace-Crabbe's Rondo harvests a decade's worth of new writing by one of Australia's foremost poets. It paints a vivid portrait of eucalypt Australia's current position in an rapidly changing world. The poet asks for fresh meanings from Gallipoli and Scotland, from physics and from `Art's porous auditorium', where poetry can still be heard. `The words are only the words,' he writes, `which is more or less everything.'' (Publication summary) 
 

X