person or book cover
Image courtesy ACU.
Kevin Hart Kevin Hart i(A18721 works by)
Born: Established: 1954 Essex,
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England,
c
c
United Kingdom (UK),
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Western Europe, Europe,
;
Gender: Male
Arrived in Australia: 1966 Departed from Australia: 2002
Heritage: English
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BiographyHistory

Kevin Hart was born in Ockendon, Essex and moved to Brisbane, Queensland, with his family in 1966. After graduating with honours from the Australian National University, he won a writing fellowship to Stanford University, California, in 1977. Returning to Australia, he completed a PhD at the University of Melbourne, The Trespass of the Sign: Deconstruction, Theology and Philosophy (1986) which was later published by Cambridge University Press in 1989 and by Fordham University Press (USA) in 2000, and has since held several academic posts, most recently at Monash University. In 2002 he left Australia to take up his appointment to the endowed Chair in Philosophy and as Professor of English at Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana, in the United States. He holds the Eric D’Arcy Chair of Philosophy and is Director of the Centre for Philosophy and Phenomenology of Religion at the Australian Catholic University (2013).

Hart's poetry is deeply religious and is often preoccupied with ageing and death. His poems were first published in 1975 and he won the FAW John Shaw Neilson Award the following year. His first book of verse, The Departure, was published in 1978. He has since won many awards, including the Grace Leven Prize twice.

Hart has written extensively on literary theory and poetry including studies of A. D. Hope, Samuel Johnson, Jean-Luc Marion and Jacques Derrida. He has translated the poetry of Giuseppe Ungaretti. Postmodernism: A Beginner's Guide was published in 2004. He has written and translated works on religion and spirituality (including The Dark Gaze : Maurice Blanchot and the Sacred (2004)) and edited the Oxford Book of Australian Religious Verse (1994).

Most Referenced Works

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon Barefoot Notre Dame : University of Notre Dame Press , 2018 13970472 2018 selected work poetry

'Barefoot is Kevin Hart's eighth collection of poems; it is rich in elegies, meditations on lost love, and celebrations of new love. The title speaks of mourning, pilgrimage, and the direct sensuous contact of flesh with earth.

'Harold Bloom has long extolled Hart as a "visionary of desire," and in this collection we find that vision deepened and that desire extended. Never before has Hart stretched his range of inspiration quite so far; while continuing to draw from Christianity, he also responds to the rich heritage of American Blues, and reveals a wit as sharp as a razor's edge.

'The poetry is at once religious poetry and love poetry; indeed, the "religious poetry" is itself love poetry. Always, Hart speaks to us in words that seem inevitable in their simplicity. As he himself has written, "The best conductor of mystery is clarity. The true bearer of complexity is simplicity." Barefoot will delight poetry lovers everywhere.' (Publication summary)

2018 finalist Foreword Reviews : INDIES INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award Poetry (non-fiction)
y separately published work icon New and Selected Poems Pymble : Angus and Robertson , 1995 Z539565 1995 selected work poetry
1995 joint winner Grace Leven Poetry Prize
y separately published work icon Peniel Hawthorn : Golvan Arts , 1991 Z130010 1991 selected work poetry
1992 joint winner Grace Leven Poetry Prize
Last amended 9 Apr 2013 15:39:17
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