Cirrus@Austlit

'Gathered here for the first time are Fay Zwicky's seven collections of poetry, published between 1975 and 2006, along with previously uncollected poems zwicky has chosen to preserve, and her essay 'Border Crossings' (hereafter 'BC'), which eloquently and engagingly recorded the growth of her imagination and provides valuable insights into the atmosphere and character of her formative years. Zwicky has had a long and distinguished career in the arts: first as a classical pianist; later as a literature teacher, literary critic, editor and sometime short-story writer; but foremost as a poet. She has not been in the public eye very much in recent years - like many of her generation she has chosen not to go online - but nor has she remained silent. She has written and published individual poems and maintained the journal that she has been keeping almost continually for more than forty years. a writer's companion book, a poetry workbook, and a record of Zwicky's response to public and private events, the journal integrates and impassioned dialogue with what she is reading, often satirical accounts of her dreams, and candid (as well as guarded) quarrels with herself, friends and family, ideas, opinions, and the whole business of living a literary and creative life. One of the journal's big recurring questions, indeed is : how does a poet sustain a creative life in the unpromising soil of an isolated city of the edge of a desert? How does she go on fighting, in James Tulip's words, to affirm over and against an oppressive Australian silence a human (and particularly a woman's) voice and feelings' (31-32).'  (Introduction)

'This volume collects all of Fay Zwicky’s poetry, including previously uncollected and unpublished poems. It reveals an erudite, passionate, and highly inventive poet, whose consummate control of her craft places her at the summit of Australian poetry.' (Publication summary)

'Required Reading examines for the first time what students have read and studied in the disciplines of English and literary studies at Australian schools and universities after 1945. On the basis of this primary evidence, the authors challenge enduring myths of curriculum history, the history of literary studies, critical theory, and cultural studies. They fill out the picture of how students were encouraged to read: when, where, and in which particular pedagogical and wider social and historical contexts. They relate dramatic changes to curriculum frameworks and syllabi, teaching and learning methods, social and cultural values and assumptions, and the academic discipline of literary studies itself. Required Reading shows, finally, how flawed assumptions about the nature and history of English and Literature have, since the 1980s, obstructed the advancement of knowledge within both fields of scholarly endeavour. Contributors include: Tim Dolin, Joanne Jones, Patricia Dowsett, John Yiannakis, Ian Reid, Jacqueline Manuel, Don Carter, Wayne Sawyer, Larissa McLean Davies, Brenton Doecke, Prue Gill, Terry Hayes, Jenny de Reuck, Susan K Martin, Tully Barnett, Kate Douglas, Alice Healy-Ingram, Georgina Arnott, and Claire Jones.' (Publication summary)

'This essay is an experiment in a reader-focused historicism. It reconsiders the cultural-political circumstances under which Marcus Clarke rewrote George Eliot's ‘The Lifted Veil’, reframing it as a radical late departure from Eliot’s mid-Victorian realism, and from the Englishness of that realism. In doing so, the essay takes seriously the critical commonplace that texts ‘exist only in their readings’ (Frow 244), their ongoing uses. By recovering something from a later moment (and a sharp lateral movement) in the history of ‘The Lifted Veil’, I aim to show how that side-history, too, can illuminate the story, as well as our understanding of Eliot’s career and the wider history of the mid-Victorian novel.'

Source: Abstract.

'The Australian Common Reader is an interactive digital archive of the reading habits and practices of ordinary Australians since the nineteenth century. You can use it to search or browse for detailed information about Australian library holdings and loans, and search or browse archives of individual readers based on their diaries and letters.'

Source: About Australian Common Reader website