John Mateer
John Mateer is a Melbourne poet.
On the second last day of the weeklong Poetry Africa 2001 international festival in Durban, South Africa, an interview with me appeared in one of the national newspapers. The text presented me as a returned exile. I was asked questions such as: ‘Have you lost your South Africanness, or do you still need it?’ Since my return to South Africa – I was last here in 1995, just after the first ‘f ... (read more)
On the last day of the Melbourne Writers’ Festival, I attended a session titled ‘Hope and Wright Remembered’, a presentation intended as a memorial for those two well-known figures of Australian poetry, A.D. Hope and Judith Wright. For a panel on poetry, it was exceptionally well attended, the Merlyn Theatre being nearly full. I had the impression that the session would be one of two things: ... (read more)
If presence in literary journals, anthologies and at writers’ festivals may be taken as an indication of a poet’s importance, Anthony Lawrence has for some time been regarded as one of Australia’s foremost poets of the post’68 generation. He has published five books of poetry, all of which to my knowledge have been well received, and he has also been the recipient of many prizes, most ... (read more)
Many see John Tranter as an important, if slightly peripheral, figure in contemporary Australian poetry. He is well known for his long involvement in the Sydney poetry scene, as well as for his role as an editor, particularly for his editing, with Philip Mead, of the Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry (1991) and, more recently, of the internet poetry journal Jacket.
Tranter’s prominence i ... (read more)