Bad Art Mother
Wakefield, $32.95 pb, 324 pp
Fiction
Brooms and cupboards
A familial portrait of the Melbourne art world
by Jane Sullivan •
Edwina Preston (photograph supplied)
In 1961, Gwen Harwood submitted a sonnet to the Bulletin under the name of Walter Lehmann. Her poem, ‘Abelard to Eloisa’, held a shocking acrostic secret that many people considered very bad art. Nobody discovered the secret until after it was published. But despite her transgression, as Wikipedia puts it, ‘she found much greater acceptance’ – to the point that she is today considered one of Australia’s greatest poets.
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