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Thylazine: The Australian Journal of Arts, Ethics & Literature                                                                                                                                         #3/thyla3f AUSTRALIAN POETS AT WORK SERIES 1 Alison Croggon, John Kinsella, Liz Hall-Downs, John Tranter, Judith Rodriguez, Peter Skrzynecki, Tracy Ryan, Komninos Zervos, Jan Owen, Grant Caldwell, Jennifer Strauss and Philip Hammial Selected by Coral Hull Alison Croggon Alison Croggon was born in 1962. Her work includes plays, libretti, translations, editing and criticism. Her first novel Navigatio (Black Pepper, 1996) was highly commended in the 1995 Australian/Vogel national literary awards. She has written two operas, The Burrow and Gauguin, with the highly regarded Sydney composer Michael Smetanin, and has completed the libretto for their third, The White Army. Her performed work for theatre includes The Burrow (Perth Festival, Sydney, Melbourne 1994-95 and broadcast by ABC Radio), Lenz (Melbourne Festival 1996), Rules of Thumb (Red Shed Company, Adelaide 1997 and ABC Radio 1998) and Confidentially Yours (Playbox Theatre ...    [Above] Photo of Alison Croggon by Jacqueline Mitelman, 2001. John Kinsella John Kinsella is the author of more than twenty books whose many prizes and awards include a Young Australian Creative Fellowship from the former PM of Australia, Paul Keating, and senior Fellowships from the Literature Board of The Australia Council. He is the editor of the international literary journal Salt. He was appointed the Richard L Thomas Professor of Creative Writing at Kenyon College in the United States for 2001, and where he is now Professor of English. He is a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge University, and Adjunct Professor to Edith Cowan University, Western Australia. His selected poems and selected essays are forthcoming, as well as a new novel Post- ...    [Above] Photo of John Kinsella by Wendy Kinsella, 1996. Liz Hall-Downs Liz Hall-Downs has been reading and performing poetry in public, on TV and radio in Australia and the USA, and publishing in journals, since 1983. Liz holds a BA from Deakin University (Victoria) with major studies in Professional Writing & Literature. Some of her books include; People of the Wetlands, historical writing commissioned by Brisbane City Council, 1996, Fit of Passion, by Liz Hall-Downs & Kim Downs, (Fit of Passion Collective, 1997), Mountains to Mangroves, and Mountains to Mangroves Haiku Cycle, A collection of Historical/ Environmental writing commissioned by Brisbane City Council and Queensland Wildlife ...    [Above] Photo of Liz Hall-Downs and Alice by Kim Downs, 2001. John Tranter John Tranter is a leading modern poet. He spent his youth on a farm on the South-east coast of Australia, attended country schools, and took his BA in 1970 after attending university sporadically. He has worked mainly in publishing and radio production for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and has travelled widely, making reading tours of the United States, England and Europe. He has lived at various times in Melbourne, Singapore, Brisbane and London, and now lives in Sydney. He has received several senior fellowships and other grants from the Literature Board of the Australia Council. Fourteen collections of his verse have been published. His work appears in ...    [Above] Photo of John Tranter by John Tranter, 1987. Judith Rodriguez Judith Rodriguez was born in Perth and brought up in Brisbane. Nine collections of her poetry have been published. Judith has had a number of exhibitions of her linocuts in Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Paris. In the early 1990s she was commissioned by the Australian Opera to write a libretto for Sydney composer Moya Henderson, on the subject of the death of baby Azaria Chamberlain and the trial of Lindy Chamberlain. This opera, Lindy, will be produced in 2002. A past Poetry Editor of Meanjin Quarterly, Judith was for eight years in the 1990s the Series Editor of modern Australian poetry at Penguin Books Australia. She has been awarded three Australia Council fellowships. She works on ...    [Above] Photo of Judith Rodriguez by Jenni Mitchell, 1998. Peter Skzynecki Peter Skrzynecki has published fourteen books of poetry and prose. Immigrant Chronicle was set on the New South Wales HSC syllabus in 1992 and, to date, has sold 20,000 copies. His literary prizes include the Grace Leven Poetry Prize, the Henry Lawson Short Story Award, and the Captain Cook Bi-Centenary Award, and he has been shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Award three times. In 1989 he received the Order of Cultural Merit from the Polish government. His work has appeared in more than eighty anthologies in Australia and overseas and has been translated into German, Greek, Turkish, Chinese, Polish, Vietnamese, Polish and Ukrainian. He teaches at the University of Western Sydney. ...    [Above] Photo of Peter Skrzynecki courtesy of The Northern District Times, 1996. Tracy Ryan Tracy Ryan was born and grew up in Western Australia but now lives in England. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Literature, and has also studied European languages at the University of Western Australia. She has worked in libraries and at bookselling, taught at Curtin University of Technology, and edited poetry and fiction for magazines. Killing Delilah was shortlisted for the 1994 Western Australian Premier's Prize for Poetry and the John Bray Award, Adelaide Festival, 1996; Bluebeard in Drag was shortlisted for the 1997 Western Australian Premier's Prize for Poetry. She was joint winner of the 1996 Times Literary Supplement/Poems on the Underground short poem competition. ...    [Above] Photo of Tracy Ryan by Wendy J. Kinsella, 1998. Komninos Zervos Komninos, performance poet, has been poeting since 1985 professionally, taking his poetry to schools, community groups, hotels, music venues, prisons, coffee lounges and universities, radio and television and now the internet. Komninos has had three plays performed by professional theatre companies in Sydney and Brisbane. In 1992 Komninos received the Australian Human Rights award for Literature and in 1991 was awarded the Australia Council's Ros Bower Award for outstanding achievement in community arts. In 1995 Komninos completed a Masters of Arts in creative writing at the University of Queensland, in which he authored a cd-rom of cyberpoetry for his dissertation. In ...    [Above] Photo of Komninos Zervos by by Effie Alexakis, 1992. Jan Owen Jan Owen is a South Australian who studied Arts and librarianship and has worked in university and college libraries. She now teaches creative writing from time to time and from place to place, most recently at the 2003 Wollongong Workshops. She has received several Arts SA grants including the Barbara Hanrahan fellowship for 2000 and several Literature Board grants including a current two-year Fellowship. Residencies have taken her to Tasmania, Rome, Malaysia and Paris and she has spoken at national and overseas conferences and festivals. She has read her work and a range of other Australian poetry in Italy, Yugoslavia, Hungary, France and the UK and has affectionate memories of ...    [Above] Photo of Jan Owen by Hrafnhildur Ragnarsdottir, 2001. Grant Caldwell Grant Caldwell was born in Melbourne, began writing poetry in 1972 while teaching economics in a Victorian country secondary school; getting into Law, Architecture or Commerce at Uni of Melbourne. He had his first poetry published in 1973, and his first book in 1979, in Sydney. He lived and worked in London, Morocco and Spain for three years. He returned to Australia in 1977, and moved to Sydney to help with the small press magazine, SCOPP and devote his time to writing. He received two Vic Arts grants (1993 and 1994) and two Australia Council Fellowships (1992 & 1994). He moved back to Melbourne in 1992, where has lived ever since. He has been teaching writing ...    [Above] Photo of Grant Caldwell by Dennis Claringbold, 2002. Jennifer Strauss Jennifer Strauss was born on a dairy farm near Heywood, and spent the first six years of her life there. She received her education successively in a Catholic convent, Presbyterian boarding school, and Anglican College of Melbourne University. Her working life has been as an academic in English departments, which has afforded her a great deal of pleasure from teaching, and the chance to move about the world a good deal - living in Britain, USA, Germany, Canada and travelling in Spain and Latin America, especially Argentina. Her first published poems were in Melbourne University Magazine. As an academic at Monash University, Jennifer published a good deal of ...    [Above] Photo of Jennifer Strauss by Elke Suhr, 2001. Philip Hammial Born in Detroit, Philip Hammial migrated to Australia in 1972. His 14th book, Bread, was short-listed for a NSW Premier's Award in 2001. In 2000 he represented Australia at 3 overseas poetry festivals: Poetry Africa 2000 in Durban; the Franco-Anglais Festival of Poetry in Paris; and The World Festival of Poets in Tokyo. He is a sculptor who has had 25 solo exhibitions & has participated in over 50 group exhibitions. As the director of The Australian Collection of Outsider Art he has organised/curated 22 exhibitions of Australian Outsider ...    [Above] Photo of Philip Hammial by Anne Welch, 2001. I Next I Back I Exit I Thylazine No.3 (March, 2001)