The Questioner in Black single work   poetry   "All the years of her life"
  • Author:agent Judith Rodriguez http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/rodriguez-judith
Issue Details: First known date: 1975... 1975 The Questioner in Black
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Notes

  • Author note: "I wrote this in 1973. There was a real skull someone owned, and a dinner and a questioner, but of course the poem came out of me. I'm still at 'How shall I live?' Its the clearest thing I ever wrote. When Robin first sang it, the poem just got up and walked. What a feeling."(Cover of The Wild Girl in the Heart)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Mother I'm Rooted : An Anthology of Australian Women Poets Kate Jennings (editor), Fitzroy : Outback Press , 1975 Z211514 1975 anthology poetry

    'Sheila Rowbotham has written that the political expression of personal experience lies within the domain of novels and poetry. Seldom has this principle been made more apparent than in the anthology Mother, I’m Rooted. It becomes more and more clear with each one of the [152] poets and 542 pages of the book that this is the unambiguous expression of a social consciousness which cannot be glossed over or dismissed as belonging to a “radical” fringe. For these poets speak from all corners of the female social situation in Australia, and cover the whole spectrum of political consciousness … the anthology includes the whole gamut of women’s experience, married, single, lesbian, heterosexual, mothers, workers housewives. Poets, they speak out in tones of despair, anger, melancholy, loneliness, solidarity, sardonic bitterness, humour, hope and hopelessness. This very diversity and wholesale inclusiveness gives Mother, I’m Rooted, a strength and a unity. A strength from the rawness of the poetry, uncompromised and undiluted by the male publishing regime; and a unity from the common experience of being woman' (87).

    Source: Howarth, Peter. 'Out of Nightmares into the Sun' Hecate 1.2 (1975): 87. (Note: Howarth's review gives the number of poets in the collection as 155; the correct number is 152.)

    Fitzroy : Outback Press , 1975
    pg. 460
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Water Life Judith Rodriguez , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1976 Z407323 1976 selected work poetry St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1976 pg. 35
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Wild Girl in the Heart Robyn Archer , Paddington : Larrikin Records , 1978 Z840520 1978 single work lyric/song Paddington : Larrikin Records , 1978
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The House by Water : New and Selected Poems Judith Rodriguez , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1988 Z827673 1988 selected work poetry St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1988 pg. 135

Works about this Work

Until the Penguins Come in on the Waves: Interview with Judith Rodriguez Barbara Bursill (interviewer), 1996 single work interview
— Appears in: Imago : New Writing , Spring vol. 8 no. 2 1996; (p. 58-72)
Until the Penguins Come in on the Waves: Interview with Judith Rodriguez Barbara Bursill (interviewer), 1996 single work interview
— Appears in: Imago : New Writing , Spring vol. 8 no. 2 1996; (p. 58-72)
Last amended 8 Feb 2005 14:25:37
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