Selected Poems 1956-1994

by Chris Wallace-Crabbe

From early work on Australian suburbs to the more public and international playfulness of his contemporary poetry, Chris Wallace-Crabbe has selected poems from eleven collections published between 1959 and 1993 for this book. The poet sought to include poems that, in the mind of his friends,
critics, and not least, himself, still "worked." He also intended this selection to bear witness of his past selves in poetry. The poems trace an arc from his life in Australia to the "combination of seriousness and decorative hedonism" found in his poetry today. The result is a fascinating overview
of a poet whose style reveals the depth, joy, and fragility of language.

Paperback

First published June 1, 1995

About the author

Chris Keith Wallace-Crabbe is an Australian poet and Emeritus Professor in The Australian Centre, University of Melbourne. He was born in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond and educated at Scotch College, Yale University, and the University of Melbourne, where for much of his life he has worked, and is now Professor Emeritus in the Australian Centre. He was Visiting Professor of Australian Studies at Harvard University and at the University of Venice, Ca'Foscari. He is also an essayist, a critic of the visual arts, and a notable public reader of his verse. After leaving school, Wallace-Crabbe... set out to be a metallurgist, but was drawn back to his childhood interest in books and art. After training in the RAAF, he worked as an electrical trade journalist while studying for his B.A. in the evenings. He published his first book of poetry while doing his Final Honors year. In 1961 he became Lockie Fellow in Australian Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Melbourne. Over the next decades he became Reader in English, and then held a Personal Chair from 1988. Thanks to the initiative of H.C.
In 2015 Wallace-Crabbe was awarded the prestigious Melbourne Prize for Literature.

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chris Wallace-Crabbe is a fine Australian poet and an outstanding academic colleague at the University of Melbourne--graceful and gracious collegiality, not the intellectual politics of the university-turned-free-market-corporation kind. I love his work primarily for its ability to transport me back to Melbourne, but it transcends the locality as well.
"At Boolara someone stitched the clouds/ to the dege of pillowing hills,/ the swamp harrier, maybe, or the blue crane,/ where dams like sightless eyes look up at stars or the sun/ rolling aove us blindly over and over again." (Skies) "Dunked into life, a squalling brat/ apeing the role of perfect child,/ I let this language buoy me up,/ shock troops lightly graduated:/ nasty, nice, nectarine, nasturtium, noun." (Inheritance)