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Chris Wallace-Crabbe

Chris Wallace-Crabbe

Chris Wallace-Crabbe AM is the author of more than twenty collections of poetry. His most recent books of verse include The Universe Looks Down (2005), and Telling a Hawk from a Handsaw (2008). He is Professor Emeritus in Culture and Communication at Melbourne University. Also a public speaker and commentator on the visual arts, he specialises in ‘artists’ books’. Read It Again, a volume of critical essays, was published in 2005. Among other awards he has won the Dublin Prize for Arts and Sciences and the Christopher Brennan Award for Literature. His latest book is Rondo (2018).

States of Poetry Series Two - Victoria | 'Heidi-Ho' by Chris Wallace-Crabbe

States of Poetry Victoria - Series Two 06 June 2018
Below great ears like galleon sailshangs an off-grey trunk – odd word –more than the puny dangling tailmarking this leatherjacket.So much overcoat in our tropics, then?But why is any creature as it is? The ark’s gangplank must have been sturdy,shipping creatures from those Turkish hillsbefore due discipline on deck. Sailing,the very devil: not a Tasmanian one,since that’s not in the book, ... (read more)

States of Poetry Series Two - Victoria | 'Nuages' by Chris Wallace-Crabbe

States of Poetry Victoria - Series Two 06 June 2018
Ah, the ever-lyrical, even ifstared into from a cabin up above:snowy cloud-sonata which thenrecedes into softness with its airy iceberg flocks can be the stuff of verse orcounterpoint, say, but can’tfeed serious fiction forthe yarnspinner has to eatthe heavy middle of our sandwich rampaging all the way fromBaghdad Prepares for Attackto an ashtray smell orpuckered brocade on a chair.Novels know ... (read more)

States of Poetry Series Two - Victoria | About Chris Wallace-Crabbe

States of Poetry Victoria - Series Two 06 June 2018
Chris Wallace-Crabbe AM is the author of more than twenty collections of poetry. His most recent books of verse include The Universe Looks Down (2005), and Telling a Hawk from a Handsaw (2008). He is Professor Emeritus in Culture and Communication at Melbourne University. Also a public speaker and commentator on the visual arts, he specialises in ‘artists’ books’. Read It Again, a volume of ... (read more)

Chris Wallace-Crabbe reviews 'Mute Poetry, Speaking Pictures' by Leonard Barkan

May 2013, no. 351 28 April 2013
Chris Wallace-Crabbe reviews 'Mute Poetry, Speaking Pictures' by Leonard Barkan
Simonides of Ceos is said to have declared that ‘Painting is mute poetry, poetry a speaking picture.’ All of us know something of what he means, about our thirst for information from the arts: and, if you like, our scrabbling for the visible within a text. One half of his mirrored pronouncement is verified by those people who, in an art museum, hurry to the curatorial information alongside a p ... (read more)
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