New and Selected Poems

Wallace-Crabbe Chris

This book distils an adult lifetime into the intense magic of poetry. Wallace-Crabbe is a nature poet in the broadest possible sense: his poems, ranging widely in tone and subject-matter, seek above all to convey the richness and variety of our world, his sense that we are "inserted headlong into life" and must make the best of what comes to us. Throughout his work – at times wryly philosophical, at times gently elegiac – Wallace-Crabbe remains passionately committed to his quest, "troubling the stubborn world for meaning".

About the Author

Chris Wallace-Crabbe is a leading Australian poet and an essayist, with a longstanding interest in the visual arts. He began as a scientist but his interest moved across to literature while he was doing National Service in the RAAF. He taught at Melbourne University for many years, and has also taught at Harvard and the University of Venice. His most recent book of poetry was "Telling a Hawk from a Handsaw" (Carcanet), and of criticism, "Read It Again" (Salt). He has won the Dublin Prize for Arts and Sciences, the Philip Hodgins Prize for Literature, and the Order of Australia. He chairs the newly established Australian Poetry Limited, and is a Professor Emeritus at Melbourne. His interest in the making of artists' books goes back fifteen years: he has been involved in a number of these, and is intrigued by what happens at the edges of a genre. Wallace-Crabbe draws, beach-walks and plays tennis, and has read his poetry all round the world.

Reviews

"...in his valuing of both the aesthetic and the ordinary as the realms of humanity, he always reminds us – despite what the end has to offer us all – of a different kind of weather, one where, even as darkness is falling, ''the lit clouds yet / sail sweetly over us / inhabiting a daylight of their own'" – David McCooey, Sydney Morning Herald

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