Michael Farrell

In The Victoria Principle, Michael Farrell extends the humour and narrative drive demonstrated in recent collections such as I Love Poetry and Googlecholia to the short story. The collection begins with a writer character trying to do literary justice to the fear of birds; other stories feature creative activity, such as the conceptual artist who deliberately boils an egg to...

The Judith Wright Calanthe Award is Australia's most prestigious poetry prize. Its award to Michael Farrell marks him out as one of our most important poets. There is no one like him for his souped-up surrealism, the range of his images, his wit and playfulness, and his satirical takes on contemporary life. The title of his new collection, Googlecholia, alludes...

In Family Trees, Michael Farrell continues to question how humans relate to each other, and to the nonhuman world of animals, plants, and objects. Inheritance can be a heavy legacy, but in Farrell's expansive rendering, it frees itself: how do we connect? Through affection, and through sharing, swapping, and listening. Family Trees sees the return of familiar characters such as...

Michael Farrell is well known for his ability to break language and action into their component gestures, freeing the emotion locked up in them, and very often their comic or magical aspects too, as the title of his new poetry collection suggests. Open Sesame includes sonnets derived from the TV drama The Bill, a sestina featuring JFK set in a...

Michael Farrell is the most adventurous and experimental of contemporary Australian poets, continually pushing the boundaries of what poetry can do. Highly regarded for the playful rhythms and comic, gestural qualities of his poetry, his poems set language, syntax, and punctuation in motion. His eye for metaphor and the unexpected combination, for punning and the letter in both its verbal...