Robert Gray Robert Gray i(A793 works by) (a.k.a. Robert William Geoffrey Gray)
Born: Established: 1945 Port Macquarie, Port Macquarie area, Hastings River area, Mid North Coast, New South Wales, ;
Gender: Male
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BiographyHistory

Robert Gray grew up in Coffs Harbour, leaving school to become a journalist on a rural newspaper. After moving to Sydney soon afterwards, he worked as a mail sorter and bookseller, and wrote for a magazine and an advertising agency. He later reviewed poetry for the ABC and the Sydney Morning Herald.

Gray was writer-in-residence at Geelong College in 1982, followed by the University of New England in 1983, Meiji University, Japan, in 1985, and the University of Western Australia in 1990. He was awarded the Patrick White Award in the same year. His writing has been supported through numerous fellowships from the Literature Board of the Australia Council for the Arts. In 1981 Gray was awarded the Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship to the USA.

Gray is highly regarded by his fellow poets. The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature quotes Les Murray, who has said that Gray has "the best eye in Australian poetry". Gray's poems are of varied length and form, and his work is noted for its accessibility. His poems frequently explore the details of particular landscapes and the human figures who inhabit them, as well as reminiscences from the poet's childhood.

Most Referenced Works

Personal Awards

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon Cumulus : Collected Poems St Kilda : John Leonard Press , 2012 Z1893435 2012 selected work poetry 'This book is a landmark in Australian poetry. For Cumulus, Robert Gray has chosen all he wishes to retain from his eight volumes of poetry, some of it considerably and significantly revised. He has included here a new book, "Nameless Earth", not previously published in Australia.

'Gray has been a daring and original experimenter in the free verse line, and also at times with traditional forms. Equally, his work is notable for its frequent, uncanny rightness in the creation of images. His thinking shows a remarkable fluency in both Eastern and Western philosophies (Gray has referred to himself as a Buddhist heretic). These are all modernist pathways, and this poetry negotiates them with a lucid, classical temper.

'Most striking is an ever-alert immediacy—a perception and reflectiveness in the fluid moment. Whether through his sensuous language or his powerful engagement with ideas, Gray's poetry continually opens us to a fresh involvement with the physical world.' (From the publisher's website.)
2012 winner Western Australian Premier's Book Awards — Poetry
2013 longlisted ASAL Awards — ALS Gold Medal
y separately published work icon Australian Poetry Since 1788 Sydney : University of New South Wales Press , 2011 Z1803846 2011 anthology poetry (taught in 1 units) 'A good poem is one that the world can’t forget or is delighted to rediscover. This landmark anthology of Australian poetry, edited by two of Australia’s foremost poets, Geoffrey Lehmann and Robert Gray, contains such poems. It is the first of its kind for Australia and promises to become a classic. Included here are Australia’s major poets, and lesser-known but equally affecting ones, and all manifestations of Australian poetry since 1788, from concrete poems to prose poems, from the cerebral to the naïve, from the humorous to the confessional, and from formal to free verse. Translations of some striking Aboriginal song poems are one of the high points. Containing over 1000 poems from 170 Australian poets, as well as short critical biographies, this careful reevaluation of Australian poetry makes this a superb book that can be read and enjoyed over a lifetime.' (From the publisher's website.)
2012 shortlisted Educational Publishing Awards Australia — Tertiary Education — Scholarly Non-Fiction Book of the Year
y separately published work icon The Land I Came Through Last Artarmon : Giramondo Publishing , 2008 Z1522938 2008 single work autobiography From the author's Preface: 'This book was meant to be mainly about my parents, although I and others have obtruded within it, and was intended neither to vindicate nor vilify them, but to retain a sense of them as they were...It seems to me that memory must be as we find it, pragmatically: something that can usually be relied upon. To deny this, in principle, is to deny there is a distinction between fantasy and empirical fact.' (p.1)
2009 winner Mark and Evette Moran Nib Award for Literature
2009 co-winner 'The Nib': CAL Waverley Library Award for Literature Mark and Evette Moran Nib Award for Literature — The Alex Buzo Shortlist Prize
2008 shortlisted Colin Roderick Award
2009 shortlisted New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards — Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction
VIEW ALL AWARDS
Last amended 29 Oct 2015 10:57:24
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