Gregory Kratzmann

Westering by Peter Kirkpatrick

June 2007, no. 292

‘Westering’ is a resonant archaism which makes a wittily ironic title for Peter Kirkpatrick’s new volume. This is work which has a decidedly début du siècle flavour in its hard-edged urban perspective on ‘out west’. The dialectic of city/bush, with its history from Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson to Les Murray, is voiced in several registers through these finely crafted and sharply literate poems.

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A Steady Storm of Correspondence: Selected Letters of Gwen Harwood 1943–1995 edited by Gregory Kratzmann

by Brenda Niall •

November 2001, no. 236

Brenda Niall reviews 'A Steady Storm of Correspondence: Selected Letters of Gwen Harwood 1943–1995' edited by Gregory Kratzmann

From a small island, messages in a bottle floating out to sea. That was Gwen Harwood’s image for the poems she sent out during her early years in Tasmania, long before she had due recognition. Her letters, by contrast, knew their destination; they were treasured for decades by her friends, and they now make up the remarkable collection A Steady Storm of Correspondence ... ... (read more)

Postcard confessions: On Gwen Harwood

by Gregory Kratzmann •

August 1992, no. 143

'Postcard confessions: On Gwen Harwood' by Gregory Kratzman

Gwen Harwood’s poetry has been the subject of an increasing number of essays and articles during the last decade; in the last twelve months three books have appeared (written by Alison Hoddinott, Elizabeth Lawson, and Jennifer Strauss) and a fourth (by Stephanie Trigg) is on the way. All of this industry, as well as the publication in the Oxford Poets series of a Collected Poems, is to be welcomed; few would deny that Gwen Harwood’s work deserves all the attention it gets, particularly as it continues to surprise and delight.

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