Dorothy Porter 
Author

Poems

Original

Übersetzung

EXUBERANCE WITH BLOODY HANDS english

Translations: de

to poem

THE EMERALD LEOPARD english

Translations: de

to poem

HOT DATE english

to poem

STARFISH english

to poem

AS CUNNING AS SERPENTS english

Translations: de

to poem

SNAKE STORY english

Translations: de

to poem

BLACK SMOKER english

Translations: de

to poem

EUROPA english

to poem

RADIATION english

Translations: de

to poem

GIANT SQUID english

Translations: de

to poem

Dorothy Porter 
Author

photo © gezett.de
* 26.03.1954, Sydney, Australia
† 10.12.2008, Melbourne, Australia
Dorothy Porter was born in 1954, and lived in Sydney and the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, before moving to Melbourne. She is the author of eight collections of poetry, Little Hoodlum, Bison, The Night Parrot, Driving too Fast, Crete, Other Worlds and Poems January–August 2004 (2004) und The Bee Hut (2009, Posthumous); and of five verse novels, Akhenaten, The Monkey’s Mask, What a Piece of Work, Wild Surmise and El Dorado (2007).

photo © gezett.de
She has also written two libretti and two works of fiction for young adults. She has won the Age Book of the Year for Poetry, the National Book Council Award for Poetry and the 2001 FAW Christopher Brennan Award for Poetry.

Her poems are characterised by the short well-spaced line, delivered with great intensity (Porter says that she writes to pop music, and to music with a dramatic intensity). The energy contained in her lines is heightened by their clipped quality. Indeed her poetry has a Dionysiac quality – the urgency and the risk of sexual desire is a frequent subject, but the poems generally have an edginess to them, and deliberately drive to the limits of experience.

She has a penchant for exotic settings (ancient Egypt, Crete), film noir (The Monkey’s Mask), and the sublime perspectives offered by such subjects as madness (What a Piece of Work) and astronomy (Wild Surmise). The pagan elements in her work have a characteristic Australian flavour, and also suggest a quarrel with Protestantism and its constraining influence in Australian life.

She has had great success with the verse novel, largely because of the intensity and accessibility of her lyrics, and has done more than any other contemporary Australian poet to make poetry interesting to ordinary readers.

Porter had been suffering from breast cancer for four years before her death. She died aged 54 on 10 December 2008.
Publications

  • Little Hoodlum

    Sydney: Prism, 1975

  • Bison

    Sydney: Prism, 1979

  • The Night Parrot

    Wentworth Falls, N.S.W.: Black Lightning Press, 1984

  • Driving Too Fast

    St Lucia / South Melbourne: UQP / Hyland House, 1989/1996

  • Akhenaten

    St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1991

  • The Witch Number

    St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1993

  • The Monkey's Mask

    South Melbourne: Hyland House, 1994 u.a.

  • Crete

    South Melbourne: Hyland House, 1996

  • What a Piece of Work

    Sydney: Picador, 1998

  • Other Worlds

    Sydney: Picador, 2001

  • Wild Surmise

    Sydney: Picador, 2002

Awards

  • 1994 Age Book of the Year for Poetry

  • 1994 National Book Council Award for Poetry

  • 2001 FAW Christopher Brennan Award for Poetry

Links