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My Tongue is My Own: A Life of Gwen Harwood
Winner of the 2023 National Biography Award
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Check link for latest rating. ( 31 ratings, 7 reviews)
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Format: Paperback / softback
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My Tongue is My Own: A Life of Gwen Harwood
$5000
$5500
Elsewhere:
Unit price
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Unavailable
Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?
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Description
A masterful portrait of a major Australian writer, her incandescent poetry and her battles to be heard in a male-dominated literary establishment.
Winner of the 2023 National Biography Award
The first biography of Gwen Harwood (1920-1995), one of Australia's most significant and distinctive poets.
Harwood is renowned for her brilliance, but loved for her humour, rebellion and mischief. A public figure by the end of her life, she was always deeply protective of her privacy, and even now, some twenty-six years after her death, little is known of the experiences that gave rise to her extraordinary poems. This book follows Harwood from her childhood in 1920s Brisbane to her final years in Hobart in the 1990s. It traces how a lively, sardonic and determined young woman built a career in the conservative 1950s, blasting her way into the patriarchal strongholds of Australian poetry.
Harwood refused to be bound by convention, 'liberating' herself, to use her word, before women's lib existed. Yet she also struggled for much of her life to combine marriage and motherhood with her creative ambitions. In this sense, she is a twentieth-century everywoman. She is also a unique and powerful presence in Australian literary history, a poet who challenged orthodoxies and spoke in a remarkable range of voices.
This illuminating, moving biography reveals a deeply passionate figure both at odds with her time and deeply of it, and reclaims and celebrates this important Australian writer.
Gwen Harwood, that excellent poet and critic, deserves a sympathetic and lively biography. Ann-Marie Priest, to her credit, has just written that book. -Ann Blainey, winner of 2009 National Biography Award
Read this meticulous biography with Harwood's poetry in hand, and chase down every poem that Priest cites. -The Sydney Morning Herald
Ann-Marie Priest has captured completely the sprite-like nature of one of Australia's finest poets... Through these pages, the great poet feels so alive. -Judges comments, National Biography Award
Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?
Gwen Harwood's biography by Ann-Marie Priest is praised as a compelling and lively work that places Harwood's voice and poetry at its core. The biography explores the complex life of Harwood, who balanced being a gifted poet with her roles as a dedicated wife and mother, while also delving into her passions, love of friendship, and her multifaceted literary personas. Featuring numerous quotes from Harwood's witty correspondence, it is regarded as essential reading for those interested in Australian poetry and the challenges faced by creative women in the past.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781760642341
Publisher: Black Inc.
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 03 May 2022
Country: Australia
Imprint: La Trobe University Press
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 40.0mm
Width: 154.0mm
Height: 233.0mm
Weight: 704g
Pages: 416
Collections
About the Author
Ann-Marie Priest is the author of A Free Flame- Australian Women Writers; Vocation in the Twentieth Century, which was shortlisted for the 2016 Dorothy Hewett Award; and Great Writers, Great Loves. She works as a senior lecturer at Central Queensland University.
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