Chris Wallace-Crabbe
Encyclopedia
Chris Wallace-Crabbe AO (born 6 May 1934) is an Australian poet
and Emeritus Professor in The Australian Centre, University of Melbourne
.
suburb of Richmond
and educated at Scotch College
, Yale University
, and the University of Melbourne
, where for much of his life he has worked, and is now Professor Emeritus in the Australian Centre. He was Visiting Professor of Australian Studies at Harvard University
and at the University of Venice
, Ca'Foscari. He is also an essayist, a critic of the visual arts, and a notable public reader of his verse.
After leaving school, Wallace-Crabbe set out to be a metallurgist, but was drawn back to his childhood interest in books and art. After training in the RAAF, he worked as an electrical trade journalist while studying for his B.A. in the evenings. He published his first book of poetry while doing his Final Honours year. In 1961 he became Lockie Fellow in Australian Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Melbourne.
Over the next decades he became Reader in English, and then held a Personal Chair from 1988. Thanks to the initiative of H.C. ("Nugget") Coombs, he was a Harkness Fellow at Yale University from 1965-67, mixing widely with American writers and developing his poetry in new directions. In later years he has spent time in Italy, reading and translating Italian verse.
Wallace-Crabbe's early collections were published in Australia, but in 1985 he began to publish with Oxford University Press, reaching an international public. Although he published some of his criticism and his one novel elsewhere, he remained with Oxford until 1998, after which date the Press ceased publishing live poets. He then took his work to Carcanet Publishers, in Manchester. Back in Australia he brought out two books with the Sydney firm of Brandl & Schlesinger. One of these was a highly experimental long poem, or "zany epic", on which he had been working for a dozen years. It would be fair to say that this dense and difficult poem divided the poet's readers.
Reviewers over the years have drawn attention time and again to the energetic mixture of demotic and elevated language which very often marks Wallace-Crabbe's poetry. For the poet this not only testifies to his wide interest in language but also to his sense of the stubborn plurality of our experience. Such mixed diction certainly persists in his very latest books, particularly in his sonnets and in the"Domestic Sublime" sequence of lyrics.
Since his retirement from university teaching he has continued to live in Melbourne, adhering to poetry. He is also Chair of the Australian Poetry Centre.
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
and Emeritus Professor in The Australian Centre, University of Melbourne
University of Melbourne
The University of Melbourne is a public university located in Melbourne, Victoria. Founded in 1853, it is the second oldest university in Australia and the oldest in Victoria...
.
Biography
Christopher Keith Wallace-Crabbe was born in the MelbourneMelbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
suburb of Richmond
Richmond, Victoria
Richmond is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 3 km south-east from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Yarra...
and educated at Scotch College
Scotch College, Melbourne
Scotch College, Melbourne is an independent, Presbyterian, day and boarding school for boys, located in Hawthorn, an inner-eastern suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia....
, Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, and the University of Melbourne
University of Melbourne
The University of Melbourne is a public university located in Melbourne, Victoria. Founded in 1853, it is the second oldest university in Australia and the oldest in Victoria...
, where for much of his life he has worked, and is now Professor Emeritus in the Australian Centre. He was Visiting Professor of Australian Studies at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
and at the University of Venice
University of Venice
Ca' Foscari University is a university in Venice, northern Italy. It was founded in 1868 as the first Italian business college. The main building of the University, Ca’ Foscari Palace, is placed in a strategic position on the bend of the Grand Canal, in the heart of the city...
, Ca'Foscari. He is also an essayist, a critic of the visual arts, and a notable public reader of his verse.
After leaving school, Wallace-Crabbe set out to be a metallurgist, but was drawn back to his childhood interest in books and art. After training in the RAAF, he worked as an electrical trade journalist while studying for his B.A. in the evenings. He published his first book of poetry while doing his Final Honours year. In 1961 he became Lockie Fellow in Australian Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Melbourne.
Over the next decades he became Reader in English, and then held a Personal Chair from 1988. Thanks to the initiative of H.C. ("Nugget") Coombs, he was a Harkness Fellow at Yale University from 1965-67, mixing widely with American writers and developing his poetry in new directions. In later years he has spent time in Italy, reading and translating Italian verse.
Wallace-Crabbe's early collections were published in Australia, but in 1985 he began to publish with Oxford University Press, reaching an international public. Although he published some of his criticism and his one novel elsewhere, he remained with Oxford until 1998, after which date the Press ceased publishing live poets. He then took his work to Carcanet Publishers, in Manchester. Back in Australia he brought out two books with the Sydney firm of Brandl & Schlesinger. One of these was a highly experimental long poem, or "zany epic", on which he had been working for a dozen years. It would be fair to say that this dense and difficult poem divided the poet's readers.
Reviewers over the years have drawn attention time and again to the energetic mixture of demotic and elevated language which very often marks Wallace-Crabbe's poetry. For the poet this not only testifies to his wide interest in language but also to his sense of the stubborn plurality of our experience. Such mixed diction certainly persists in his very latest books, particularly in his sonnets and in the"Domestic Sublime" sequence of lyrics.
Since his retirement from university teaching he has continued to live in Melbourne, adhering to poetry. He is also Chair of the Australian Poetry Centre.
Awards
- 1986 - Grace Leven Prize for Poetry
- 1987 - The Dublin Prize for Arts and Science, awarded through the University of Melbourne
- 1992 - Human Rights and Equal Opportunity CommissionHuman Rights and Equal Opportunity CommissionThe Australian Human Rights Commission is a national human rights institution, a statutory body funded by, but operating independently of, the Australian Government. It has the responsibility for investigating alleged infringements under Australia’s anti-discrimination legislation...
Poettry Award with Kerry Flattley for From the Republic of Conscience - 1995 - winner of "The Age" Book of the Year, and the D.J. O'Hearn Prize for Poetry
- 2002 - winner of the Philip Hodgins Memorial MedalPhilip HodginsPhilip Ian Hodgins was a prize-winning Australian poet whose work appeared in such major publications as The New Yorker. Peter Rose called him 'probably the most loved [Australian] poet of his generation', noting that 'his admirers ranged from... Alan Hollinghurst to Ron Barassi and Peter Porter...
at the Mildura Writer's Festival - 2002 - Centenary Medal
- 2006 - Doctor of Letters honoris causa (Melb.)
- 2011 - appointed an Officer of the Order of AustraliaOrder of AustraliaThe Order of Australia is an order of chivalry established on 14 February 1975 by Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia, "for the purpose of according recognition to Australian citizens and other persons for achievement or for meritorious service"...
(AO)
Poetry
- 1959: The Music of Division, Sydney: Angus & Robertson
- 1962: Eight Metropolitan Poems, Adelaide: Australian Letters; with John Brack
- 1963: In Light and Darkness, Sydney: Angus & Robertson
- 1967: The Rebel General, Sydney: Angus & Robertson
- 1971: Where the Wind Came, Sydney: Angus and Robertson
- 1973: Selected Poems, Sydney: Angus & Robertson
- 1976: The Foundations of Joy, (Poets of the Month Series), Sydney: Angus & Robertson
- 1979: The Emotions Are Not Skilled Workers, Sydney: Angus & Robertson
- 1985: The Amorous Cannibal, Oxford: Oxford University Press
- 1988: I'm Deadly Serious, Oxford: Oxford University Press
- 1989: Sangue e l'acqua, translated and edited by Giovann Distefano, Abano Terme: Piovan Editore
- 1990: For Crying Out Loud, Oxford: Oxford University Press
- 1993: Rungs of Time, Oxford: Oxford University Press
- 1995: Selected Poems 1956-1994, Oxford: Oxford University Press
- 1998: Whirling, Oxford: Oxford University Press
- 2001: By and Large, Manchester: Carcanet; and Sydney; Brandl and Schlesinger
- 2003: A Representative Human, Brunswick: Gungurru Press
- 2004: Next
- 2005: The Universe Looks Down, Brandl & Schlesinger, ISBN 1-876040-74-2
- 2006: Then
- 2008: "Telling a Hawk from a Handsaw", Manchester Carcanet Oxford Poets
Recorded poetry
- 1973: Vinyl record: Chris Wallace-Crabbe Reads From His Own Verse, St.Lucia
- 2000: The Poems; Brunswick: Gungurru
- 2009: "The Domestic Sublime", Sydney: River Road Press
Literary criticism
- 19741974 in literatureThe year 1974 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics is founded by Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman.-New books:*Richard Adams - Shardik*Kingsley Amis - Ending Up...
: Melbourne or the Bush: Essays on Australian Literature and Society, Sydney: Angus & Robertson - 1979: Toil and Spin: Two Directions in Modern Poetry, Melbourne: Hutchinson
- 19831983 in literatureThe year 1983 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Ironweed by William Kennedy is published.*Salvage for the Saint by Peter Bloxsom and John Kruse is published. This is the final book in a series of novels, novellas and short stories featuring the Leslie Charteris...
: Three Absences in Australian Writing, Townsville: Foundation for Australian Literary Studies - 1990: Poetry and Belief, Hobart: University of Tasmania, 1990
- 19901990 in literatureThe year 1990 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*J. K. Rowling gets the idea for Harry Potter while on a train ride from Manchester to London. She says "I was staring out the window, and the idea for Harry just came. He appeared in my mind's eye, very fully formed...
: Falling into Language, Melbourne: Oxford University Press - 2005: "Read It Again", Cambridge: Salt
Edited
- 1963: Six Voices: Contemporary Australian Poets, Sydney: Angus & Robertson; American Edition, Westport, 1979
- 1971: Australian Poetry 1971, Sydney: Angus & Robertson
- 1980: The Golden Apples of the Sun: Twentieth Century Australian Poetry, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
- 1981: The Australian Nationalists: Modern Critical Essays, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, (with Peter Pierce),
- 1984: Clubbing of the Gunfire: 101 Australian War Poems, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1984 (with D. Goodman and D.J. Hearn)
- 1911: Multicultural Australia: the Challenges of Change, Newham (with Kerry Flattley),
- 1992: From the Republic of Conscience, Melbourne: Aird Books in association with Amnesty International; and New York: White Pine Press, 1992 (with Kerry Flattley and Sigurdur A. Magnusson), ISBN 0947214216
- 1994: Ur Riki Samviskunnar, Reykjavik: Amnesty International
- 19981998 in literatureThe year 1998 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*March 5 - Tennessee Williams' 1938 play, Not About Nightingales, receives its stage première....
: Author, Author! Tales of Australian Literary Life, Melbourne: O.U.P., 1998 (with Harold BolithoHarold BolithoHarold Bolitho was an Australian academic, historian, author and professor emeritus in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University The name Bolitho is of Cornish origin.-Career:...
) - 19981998 in literatureThe year 1998 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*March 5 - Tennessee Williams' 1938 play, Not About Nightingales, receives its stage première....
: Associate Editor (with Bruce Bennett and Jennifer Strauss): The Oxford Literary History of Australia, Melbourne: Oxford University Press - 1998: Approaching Australia: Papers from the Harvard Australian Studies Symposium, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Committee on Australian Studies
- 2002: La Poésie Australienne, Valenciennes: Presses Universitaires, (with Simone Kadi)
- 2004: "Imagining Australia: Literature and Culture in the New New World", Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Committee on Australian Studies. With Judith Ryan
Artist's Books with the artist Bruno Leti
- 1994: "Drawing", Melbourne: Australian Print Workshop
- 1995: "Apprehensions", Melbourne: the artist
- 1996: "New Year", Melbourne and Canberra: the artist
- 1996: "The Iron Age", Melbourne: the artist
- 1999: "Timber", New York: the artist and Raphael Fodde; with Inge and Grahame King
- 2001: "The Alignments Two", Melbourne: the artist
- 2002: "Colours", Melbourne: the artist
- 2004: "The Alignments One", Melbourne: the artist
Other Artists' Books
- 2006: "All Writing Still is to be Done", Vicenza: L'Officina; with Marco Fazzini and Gianluca Murasecchi
- 2005: "The Flowery Meadow" (after Dante), Melbourne: Electio Editions; with Alan Loney and Bruno Leti
- 2007: "Skin, Surfaces and Shadows", Warrandyte: with Tommaso Durante