POETS AND THEIR POETRY GWEN HARWOOD Dr Natalie Konyu Gwen Harwood Born Gwendoline Foster in Brisbane in 1920 Gwen Harwood is recognised nationally and internationally as one of Australias finest poets ID: 179207
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ACL1002POETS AND THEIR POETRYGWEN HARWOOD
Dr Natalie Kon-yuSlide2
Gwen Harwood
Born Gwendoline Foster in Brisbane in 1920, Gwen Harwood is recognised nationally and internationally as one of Australia’s finest poets.
Part of this recognition comes from the fact that she writes poetry that is able to speak to a broad audience, yet that also is highly allusive, deeply metaphorical (as well as intertextual) and open to a variety of interpretations.Slide3
Gwen HarwoodHer experiences as a wife and mother growing up in conservative Australia in the 1950s also has a big impact on her work, with many poems touching upon themes that are domestic and ordinary.
It could be for this reason that her poetry continues to attract such a wide readership. Slide4
Collections of Harwood’s Work
Harwood published six collections of her poetry in her life-time:
Poems
(1963)
Poems Volume II
(1968)
Selected Poems
or
Poems 1969-1974
(1975)
The Lion’s Bride
(1981)
Bone Scan
(1988)
The Present Tense
(1995)
She died in 1995, and subsequent editions of her work have appeared with
Gwen Harwood – Collected Poems 1943-1995
being the most comprehensive collection of her workSlide5
Form in Harwood’s PoemsAlthough written in an era where Free Verse was commonly employed, Harwood’s work is highly formal.
She writes many fourteen line poems, and experiments widely with topic, but also with metre, rhyme and rhythm.
She doesn’t always follow the rhyme scheme of the English (or Shakespearian) or the Italian (or Petrarchen) Sonnet, but deviates from these forms.Slide6
Form in Harwood’s PoemsHarwood also experiments with rhyme and meter, often avoiding pentameter, and using less obvious feet such as tetrameter (
four
feet) and hexameter (six feet).
As Hodinott and Kratzmann write Harwood ‘plays with a traditional form such as the sonnet, the ballad or the fourteen line Pushkin stanza or invents her own variant of an intricately rhyming stanzaic form” (xxv)Slide7
Home of Mercy (1963)
By two and two the ruined girls are walking
at the neat margin of the convent grass
into the chapel, counted as they pass
by an old nun who silences their talking.
They smooth with roughened hands the clumsy dress
that hides their ripening bodies. Memories burn
like incense as towards plaster saints they turn
faces of mischievous children in distress.
They kneel: time for the spirit to begin
with prayer its sad recourse to dream and flight
from their intolerable weekday rigour
Each morning they will launder, for their sin,
sheets soiled by other bodies, and at night
angels will wrestle them with brutish vigour.
Slide8
Reading the PoemWhat is the tone of the poem?
What is the poem about?
How do we know?
Does the poem have a formal structure, and, if so, what is it?
How does the form influence the meaning of the poem?Slide9
In the Park
(1963)
She sits in the park. Her clothes are out of date.
Two children whine and bicker, tug her skirt.
A third draws aimless patterns in the dirt
Someone she loved once passed by – too late
to feign indifference to that casual nod.
“How nice” et cetera. “Time holds great surprises.”
From his neat head unquestionably rises
a small balloon…”but for the grace of God…”
They stand a while in flickering light, rehearsing
the children’s names and birthdays. “It’s so sweet
to hear their chatter, watch them grow and thrive, ”
she says to his departing smile. Then, nursing
the youngest child, sits staring at her feet.
To the wind she says, “They have eaten me alive.” Slide10
Reading the PoemWhat is the tone of the poem?
What is the poem about?
How do we know?
Does the poem have a formal structure, and, if so, what is it?
How does the form influence the meaning of the poem?Slide11
A note on the Poems
These poems are written in sonnet form – most obviously the Petrarchen form.
The Petrarchen sonnet is usually reserved for poems of love and devotion; how do these two poems fit into that definition? How do they challenge it?
These poems were not published under the name Gwen Harwood, but rather under one of Harwood’s pseudonyms, Walter Lehmann. Why would Harwood use a false name for these two works?Slide12
Walter Lehmann, Francis Geyer, Miriam Stone and Timothy Kline
The above names are all names under which Harwood sent out work for publication.
They list includes three male names and one female. ‘In the Park’ was sent out under Lehman’s name in 1961.
When Harwood used her pseudonyms, she did so for good reason. Part of her agenda was to show the ways in which poems by men, even bad ones, were often favoured by editors of literary magazines at the time.
Slide13
Eloisa to Abelard (1961)
Solace and hope depart. God’s finger traces
On fields of frozen darkness: You shall find
Loss, absence, nothing. Walking on the wind
Our Lord speaks to a crowd of foolish faces,
No face that is not mine, while filtering through
Gaps, honeycombs of memories you seem
But the faint ghost of a remembered dream.
Unveiled by pain, I bleed. My wound is you.
Lost in the well of space, my spirit hears
“
Lucis creator optime …”
The choir
Entreats God, out of tune. I join my voice
To theirs. Nightfall’s immense. I taste my tears.
I reap the harvest of my own desire.
No heart escapes the torment of its choice. Slide14
Abelard to Eloisa (1961)
Far above memory’s landscape let the fears
Unlatched from thundering valleys of your mind
Carry their lightning. Stare the sun up. Find
Kinetic heat to scorch your mist of tears.
All that your vision limned by night appears
Loose in dismembering air: think yourself blind.
Louder that death in headlines the unkind
Elements hawk my passion: stop your ears.
Deny me now. Be Doubting Thomas. Thrust
Into my side the finger of your grief.
Tell me I’m an apparition frayed
Out of the tattered winding sheet of lust .
Recall no ghost of love. Let no belief
Summon me, fleshed and bleeding, from the shade.Slide15
‘Tas Housewife Hoax of the Year’
Susan Sheridan writes that Harwood ‘had been waging a war with other male editors and fellow poets for some time . . .telling stories about how (editors) rejected poems she knew were good; or how they accepted and then lost poems; or kept them for months and then rejected them; or published them and neglected to send her the payment.’
‘Noting that poems of her male pseudonyms are welcomed more warmly – and sometimes paid at a better rate, Harwood’s complaint . . . is most acute about the way women are excluded from informal networks.’Slide16
‘Tas Housewife Hoax of the Year’
‘It was just a natural piece of mischief. I was talking to Hal Porter one day, and I said to him that a lot of people wouldn’t know a poem if it hit them. I bet him that I could drop a sonnet into the
Bulletin
with a foul acrostic in it, and they would publish it’ (Harwood).
‘The second reason is much more practical as Harwood believed that ‘lady poets’, as she called them, did not receive the same acceptance as males. She supported this statement by publishing under at least three male pseudonyms — Walter Lehmann, Francis Geyer and Timothy Kline — and claimed that she received far more invitations and favourable letters to her male pseudonyms than she ever did herself.’ (Atherton, 2002)Slide17
‘Tas Housewife Hoax of the Year’
‘The third reason’ Atherton writes ‘is much more calculated. Harwood had become disenchanted with her poetry being published in the
Bulletin
alongside poetry she considered of ‘marked inferior quality’ and her cunning hoax would both give her extensive publicity and prove her point.
It was not only considered a scandal because of the expletive but, to Harwood’s dismay, because it was attributed to a housewife. A staff correspondent responding to the hoax in a subsequent edition of the
Bulletin
condescending that Harwood had ‘apparently imagined that the acrostic would remain her private secret forever. Such are the fantasies of lady poets’. (Atherton, 2002).Slide18
S
olace and hope depart. God’s finger traces
O
n fields of frozen darkness: You shall find
L
oss, absence, nothing. Walking on the wind
O
ur Lord speaks to a crowd of foolish faces,
N
o face that is not mine, while filtering through
G
aps, honeycombs of memories you seem
B
ut the faint ghost of a remembered dream.
U
nveiled by pain, I bleed. My wound is you.
L
ost in the well of space, my spirit hears
“
L
ucis creator optime …”
The choir
E
ntreats God, out of tune. I join my voice
T
o theirs. Nightfall’s immense. I taste my tears.
I
reap the harvest of my own desire.
N
o heart escapes the torment of its choice. Slide19
F
ar above memory’s landscape let the fears
U
nlatched from thundering valleys of your mind
C
arry their lightning. Stare the sun up. Find
K
inetic heat to scorch your mist of tears.
A
ll that your vision limned by night appears
L
oose in dismembering air: think yourself blind.
L
ouder that death in headlines the unkind
E
lements hawk my passion: stop your ears.
D
eny me now. Be Doubting Thomas. Thrust
I
nto my side the finger of your grief.
T
ell me I’m an apparition frayed
O
ut of the tattered winding sheet of lust .
R
ecall no ghost of love. Let no belief
S
ummon me, fleshed and bleeding, from the shade.Slide20
Tas Housewife Hoax of the Year
Not only did Harwood reveal the blind spot the editors of
The Bulletin
had in judging poems by male writers, but her hoax pointed to the way in which she detested being belittled as ‘the Tas Housewife’.
Interestingly, she reveals something about what is thought of as ‘high art’ (which poetry is accused of being).
What do you think makes ‘In the Park’ and ‘House of Mercy’ good poems, and the Abelard and Eloisa poems bad ones?