Poetry

Australian Poetry since 1788 edited by Geoffrey Lehmann and Robert Gray

Item: Australian Poetry since 1788
Author: Michael Hofmann

by Michael Hofmann •

December 2011–January 2012, no. 337

UNSW Press, $69.95 hb, 1090 pp, 9781747232638

Poetry

Australian Poetry since 1788 edited by Geoffrey Lehmann and Robert Gray

by Michael Hofmann •

December 2011–January 2012, no. 337

Stumbling round the house absent-mindedly or in the off-hours, I wonder where the economy-sized fish tank came from; or the dictionary of some unexpectedly eloquent Oceanian language; or the errant slab of copper sulphate (did some friend or enemy leave it?). Then I remember that it’s the new Australian poetry anthology I am reviewing, the thick end of 1100 large pages – is it the format called royal? or republican?! – and I am in for another round of sleeplessness. It is even possible that, in the United States, I have read and written about the book mostly on Australian time.

Michael Hofmann

Michael Hofmann was born in Germany and moved to England in 1961. Educated at Oxford and Cambridge, he has worked as a freelance writer, translator, and critic since 1983. His most recent poetry collection One Lark, One Horse was released in 2018. Nights in the Iron Hotel, his first book of poems, appeared in 1984. He is an influential and award-winning translator of writers such as Franz Kafka, Joseph Roth, and Herta Müller. In 2008 he was Poet in Residence in Queensland. Michael Hofmann's Selected Poems appeared with FSG and Faber. His Gottfried Benn translations, Impromptus, was released in 2013.