Robert Gray (poet)

Robert William Geoffrey Gray (b. February 23, 1945) is an Australian poet, freelance writer, and critic.

Biography

Gray grew up in Coffs Harbour and was educated in a country town on the north coast of New South Wales. He trained there as a journalist, and since then has worked in Sydney as an editor, advertising copywriter, reviewer and buyer for bookshops. His first book of poems, "Creekwater Journal", was published in 1973.

Gray has been a writer-in-residence at Meiji University in Tokyo and at several universities throughout Australia including Geelong College in 1982. He has won the Adelaide Arts Festival and the New South Wales and Victorian Premiers' Awards for poetry. In 1990 he received the Patrick White Award. With Geoffrey Lehmann, he edited two anthologies, The Younger Australian Poets and Australian Poetry in the Twentieth Century, and he is the editor of "Selected Poems" by Shaw Neilson, and "Drawn from Life", the journals of the painter John Olsen. "After Images" is his latest collection of poetry.

2008 sees the much anticipated publication of his memoir, The Land I Came Through Last.

Awards

* 1986 - New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry for "Selected Poems 1963-83"
* 1986 - The Adelaide Festival of the Arts Award
* 1986 - The Grace Leven Prize for Poetry
* 1990 - Patrick White Award
* 1994 - Victorian Premier's Literary Award - C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry for "Certain Things"
* 2002 - The Age Book of the Year Dinny O'Hearn Poetry Prize for "Afterimages"
* 2002 - Victorian Premier's Literary Award - C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry for "Afterimages"

Bibliography

* "The Land I Came Through Last" (Giramond, 2008)

Collections

* "Nameless Earth" (Carcanet, 2006)
* "Afterimages" (Duffy & Snellgrove, 2002)
* "New Selected Poems" (Duffy & Snellgrove, 1998)
* "Lineations" (Duffy & Snellgrove , 1996)
* "Certain Things" (William Heinemann Australia, 1993)
* "Selected Poems" (Angus & Robertson, 1990)
* "Piano" (Angus & Robertson, 1988)
* "Selected Poems 1963-1983" (Angus & Robertson, 1985)
* "The Skylight" (Angus & Robertson, 1984)
* "Grass Script" (Angus & Robertson, 1979)
* "Creekwater Journal" (University of Queensland Press, 1974)
* "Introspect, Retrospect : Poems" (Lyre-Bird Writers, c.1970)

Edited

* "A Spill of Light, A Thrust of Shadow" (Youngstreet Poets, 1999)
* "Australian Poetry in the Twentieth Century" (William Heinemann Australia, 1991) edited with Geoffrey Lehmann
* "Sydney's Poems : A Selection on the Cccasion of the City's One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary 1842-1992" (Primavera Press, 1992) edited with Vivian Smith
* "Selected Poems / Roland Robinson" (Angus & Robertson, 1989)
* "The Younger Australian poets" (Hale & Iremonger, c1983) edited with Geoffrey Lehmann

Biography

* "The King's Wife : Five Queen Consorts" (Secker & Warburg, 1990)

Interviews

*"The Sydney Morning Herald" [http://www.smh.com.au/news/books/poet-palely-loitering/2008/09/05/1220121498998.html]

Notes

References

* [http://www.duffyandsnellgrove.com.au/authors/gray.htm Duffy and Snellgrove - Robert Gray]
* [http://www.austlit.edu.au/run?ex=ShowAgent&agentId=A2C AustLit - Gray, Robert]