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Gwen Harwood 1920-1995 An introduction to her life and work

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An introduction to the life and work of Gwen Harwood

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Page 1: Gwen Harwood

Gwen Harwood

1920-1995

An introduction to her life and work

Page 2: Gwen Harwood
Page 3: Gwen Harwood

Who is Gwen Harwood?

Born in Brisbane, she lived most of her life in Tasmania

She had a happy childhood in Queensland

Harwood joined a nunnery for six months

She married and had four children

Her writing career began in her 30s

Page 4: Gwen Harwood

Oyster Cove

Page 5: Gwen Harwood

Who is Gwen Harwood?

She was passionate about language and music

She loved being a mother and a grandmother

She wrote very personal letters to Thomas Riddell – a man who was not her husband – and dedicated all her volumes of poetry to him for 45 years

Page 6: Gwen Harwood

Who is Gwen Harwood?

She played games with publishers and readers

She challenged the establishment and its values

She survived cancer in 1985, many poems draw on this experience

Page 7: Gwen Harwood

Why look at contextual information?

We read her poems for signs of parallel with her private life

We gain meaning of her texts through knowledge of her personal life

The poet herself had to negotiate the complex relationship between her private and public life

Page 8: Gwen Harwood

Masks and Disguises

Harwood developed personae, using ‘disguises’ for different purposes. Harwood is sometimes not the ‘I’ in her poetry. She sometimes writes in the voice of an invented character.

She often used pseudonyms also. She published under a variety false names.

Page 9: Gwen Harwood

The Pseudonyms

Timothy Klue – an angry young man

Walter Lehman – he writes about Professor Eisenbart, an arrogant academic

Francis Geyer – a Hungarian refugee who writes about a musician called Krote

Miriam Stone – a Jewish housewife from Armidale NSW

Page 10: Gwen Harwood

Why?

Gwen Harwood wanted to get her work published as much as possible

Some poems rejected under her real name were accepted under male pseudonyms

When she became ‘known’ she was concerned that she was being published not on her merits but because of her name

Page 11: Gwen Harwood

The great Bulletin hoax of 1961

Two sonnets, written by Walter Lehman, were acrostics: SO LONG BULLETIN and F--- ALL EDITORS

This was discovered by a Melbourne Uni Student

The offending issue was recalled and an apology published

Page 12: Gwen Harwood

Scandal!

This was an anti-establishment act. Here was a woman in her 40s telling the establishment to get F---d

Right up until the day she died she kept people guessing, refusing to deny that she published under different names

Page 13: Gwen Harwood

One of Australia’s most acclaimed poets:

Harwood uses traditional metres and forms

Her work is seen as ‘European’ rather than Australian

She is an intellectual who is critical of academics

Her work is passionate and sexual

Page 14: Gwen Harwood

Harwood’s final word:

The affirmation of the value of friendship is one of the most striking characteristics of her work

She said: ‘My life is linked together by very long friendships. It is good in your 60th year to have friends who love you still, in spite of your faults.’