VCE Literature Text List 2019

The following texts proposed by the Literature Text Advisory Panel have been approved by the
Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) as suitable for study in Units 3 and 4 in 2019.
Texts were selected in accordance with the following criteria and guidelines.

Criteria for text selection

Each text selected for the VCE Literature text list will:
 have literary merit
 be an excellent example of form and genre
 sustain intensive study, raising interesting issues and providing challenging ideas
 reflect current community standards and expectations in the context of senior secondary study of
texts.
The text list as a whole will:
 be suitable for a diverse student cohort from a range of backgrounds and contexts, including
students for whom English is an additional language
 reflect the cultural diversity of the Victorian community
 include texts by Australians, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
 include a balance of new and established works*, including a Shakespearean text
 include texts that display affirming perspectives
 reflect engagement with global perspectives.
*Established works include texts that are recognised as having enduring artistic value.

Guidelines for text selection

The text list for VCE Literature must adhere to the following guidelines:

 The text list will contain 30 texts.

 The text list must represent a range of texts in the following approximate proportions:
 nine novels
 eight plays
 three collections of short stories
 four other works of literature
 six collections of poetry.
 One-third of texts on the text list must be by Australian authors.
 Approximately 75 per cent of texts on the text list would be expected to be familiar to most VCE
Literature teachers.
 The text list must contain titles that are different from those on the VCE English and EAL text list.
 The text list will be reviewed annually, with approximately 25 per cent of the texts being changed.
No text will appear for more than four consecutive years or fewer than two years.
 Texts will be accompanied by full bibliographic details where necessary.

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Information for schools

Teachers must consider the text list in conjunction with the relevant text selection information
published on page 15 of the VCE Literature Study Design 2017–2020 for Units 3 and 4.
The selection must include:
 one novel
 one collection of poetry
 one play
 two further texts selected from novels, plays, collections of poetry, collections of short stories,
other literature or films.
At least one of the texts selected must be Australian.
Students must study a sixth text for Unit 3 Area of Study 1. The text used for Unit 3 Area of Study 1
must be an adaptation of one of the five required texts selected from the text list published by the
VCAA. The text may take the form of, but is not limited to:
 a live performance by a professional theatre company
 a film, including a film script
 a television miniseries
 a playscript.
A student adaptation cannot be used as the adaptation text for Unit 3 Area of Study 1.
The literary criticism studied for Unit 4 Area of Study 1 is not prescribed.
The selection of texts should ensure that students experience a range of literature from early to
contemporary works, dealing with a diversity of cultural experiences and a range of viewpoints.
Students are encouraged to read widely in both Units 3 and 4 to support the achievement of all
outcomes.
While the VCAA considers all the texts on the text list suitable for study, teachers should be aware
that with some texts there may be sensitivities in relation to certain issues. In selecting texts for study,
teachers should make themselves aware of these issues prior to introducing the text to students.
The VCAA does not prescribe editions; any complete edition may be used. However, it should be
noted that the editions nominated in the text list are those from which the passages for the
examination will be selected. For collections of poetry, poems are prescribed; students must study the
poems listed in the text list.
The bibliographic information in this document is provided to assist teachers to obtain texts and is
correct, as far as possible, at the time of publication. Publishing details may change from time to time
and teachers should consult the VCAA Bulletin regularly for any amendments or alterations to the text
list.

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Key to codes
The text list is presented alphabetically by author according to text type. Abbreviations in brackets
after the titles signify the following:
(A) This text meets the Australian requirement.
(#) Bracketed numbers indicate the number of years that a text has appeared on the VCE Literature
text list; (1) for example, indicates that 2019 is the first year that a text has appeared on the text list.

Novels
Austen, Jane, Northanger Abbey (1)
Cadwallader, Robyn, The Anchoress (A) (2)
Calvino, Italo, ‘The Baron in the Trees’, in Our Ancestors, Archibald Colquhoun (trans.) (3)
Conrad, Joseph, Heart of Darkness (4)
Gaskell, Elizabeth, North and South (3)
Stead, Christina, The Man Who Loved Children (A) (4)
Vásquez, Juan Gabriel, The Sound of Things Falling, Anne McLean (trans.) (3)
Winterson, Jeanette, The Passion (2)
Wright, Alexis, Carpentaria (A) (1)

Plays
Bovell, Andrew, Speaking in Tongues (A) (1)
Delaney, Shelagh, A Taste of Honey (2)
Euripides, Hippolytus (1)
Morrison, Toni, Desdemona (1)
Reza, Yasmina, Art (2)
Shakespeare, William, Othello (1)
Shakespeare, William, Twelfth Night (3)
Shepard, Sam, Buried Child (3)
Williams, Tennessee, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (3)

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Short stories
Beneba Clarke, Maxine, Foreign Soil (A) (2)
Stories for study: ‘David’; ‘Hope’, ‘Shu Yi’, ‘Railton Road’, ‘Gaps in the Hickory’, ‘Big Islan’, ‘The Stilt
Fishermen of Kathaluwa’, ‘The Suki Yaki Book Club’
Dovey, Ceridwen, Only the Animals (A) (2)
Stories for study: ‘Pigeons, a Pony, the Tomcat and I’, ‘Hundstage’ ‘Somewhere Along the Line the
Pearl Would be Handed to Me’, ‘Plautus, a Memoir of my Years on Earth and Last days in Space’, ‘I,
the Elephant, Wrote This’, ‘A Letter to Sylvia Plath’, ‘Psittacophile’
Gogol, Nikolay, The Diary of a Madman, The Government Inspector and Selected Stories (4)
Stories for study: ‘Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and His Aunt’, ‘How Ivan Ivanovich Quarrelled with Ivan
Nikiforovich’, ‘Nevsky Prospekt’, ‘The Nose’, ‘The Overcoat’, ‘Diary of a Madman’, ‘The Carriage’

Other literature
Fitzpatrick, Sheila, My Father’s Daughter: Memories of an Australian Childhood (A) (4)
Voltaire, Candide, or Optimism (3)
Woolf, Virginia, A Room of One’s Own (2)

Poetry
Each poem listed must be studied. In the case of longer poems, extracts from the poem may be used
in the examination.
Browning, Robert, Selected Poems (4)
Poems for study: ‘Porphyria’s Lover’, ‘My Last Duchess’, ‘Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister’,
‘The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church’, ‘Love Among the Ruins’, ‘Fra Lippo
Lippi’, ‘A Toccata of Galuppi’s’, ‘Andrea Del Sarto’, ‘Two in the Campagna’, ‘Confessions’,
‘Youth and Art’, ‘Never the Time and the Place’.
Chang, Tina, Handal, Nathalie and Shankar, Ravi (eds), Language for a New Century: Contemporary
Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond (3)
Poems for study from ‘In the Grasp of Childhood Fields’: Joseph O Legaspi, ‘Ode to My
Mother’s Hair’; Ha Jin, ‘Homework’; Tanikawa Shuntarō, ‘In Praise of Goldberg’; Xuân Quỳnh,
‘The Blue Flower’; Romesh Gunesekera, ‘Turning Point’; Dilawar Karadaghi, ‘A Child Who
Returned from There Told Us’; Luis Cabalquinto, ‘Depths of Field’.
Poems for study from ‘Parsed into Colors’: Diana Der-Hovanessian, ‘Two Voices’; Leung Ping-
Kwan, ‘Postcards of Old Hong Kong’; Ravi Shankar, ‘Exile’; Gregory Djanikian, ‘The Boy Who
Had Eleven Toes’; K Dhondup, ‘Exile’; Li-Young Lee, ‘Immigrant Blues’.
Poems for study from ‘Slips and Atmospherics’: Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, ‘The World’s a
Printing House’; Arundhathi Subramaniam, ‘Strategist’; Marjorie Evasco, ‘Dreamweavers’;
Michael Ondaatje, ‘Proust in the Waters’.

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Plath, Sylvia, Ariel (2)

Poems for study: ‘Morning Song’, ‘Sheep in Fog’, ‘The Applicant’, ‘Lady Lazarus’, ‘Tulips’,
‘Cut’, ‘The Night Dances’, ‘Poppies in October’, ‘Nick and the Candlestick’, ‘The Moon and the
Yew Tree’, ‘Letter in November’, ‘Daddy’, ‘You’re’, ‘The Arrival of the Bee Box’, ‘The Munich
Mannequins’, ‘Balloons’, ‘Kindness’, ‘Words’
Wagan Watson, Samuel, Smoke Encrypted Whispers (A) (2)
Poems for study: ‘Magnesium Girl’, ‘On the River’, ‘Waiting for the Good Man’, ‘White Stucco
Dreaming’, ‘Jetty Nights’, ‘A Verse for the Cheated’, ‘The Gloom Swans’, ‘Labelled’, ‘For the
Wake and Skeleton Dance’, ‘Cheap White-Goods at the Dreamtime Sale’, ‘Poem 9’, ‘Hotel
Bone’, ‘We’re Not Truckin’ Around’, ‘Night Racing’, ‘Deo Optimo Maximo’, ‘Jaded Olympic
Moments’, ‘Smoke Signals’, ‘Cribb Island’
Wallace-Crabbe, Chris, New and Selected Poems (A) (4)
Poems for study: ‘Shadows’, ‘The Swing’, ‘In Light and Darkness’, ‘Genesis’, ‘Now That April’s
Here’, ‘Sacred Ridges Above Diamond Creek’, ‘The Thing Itself’, ‘An Elegy’, ‘Sunset Sky Near
Coober Pedy’, ‘Reality’, ‘Erstwhile’, ‘Timber’, ‘The Rescue Will Not Take Place’, ‘Cho Ben
Thanh: Richmond’, ‘At the Clothesline’ (in ‘The Domestic Sublime’)
White, Petra, A Hunger (revised edition) (A) (1)
Poems for study: ‘Ode on Love’, ‘Selva Oscura’, ‘By This Hand’, ‘Magnolia Tree’, ‘Feral Cow’,
‘The Relic’, ‘Truth and Beauty’, ‘Woman and Dog’, ‘Ricketts Point’, ‘Southbank (1-11)’,
‘Highway: Eucla Beach’, ‘Highway: Bunda Cliffs’, ‘From Munich’, ‘Karri Forest’

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Annotations
These annotations are provided to assist teachers with text selection. The comments are not intended
to represent the only possible interpretation or a favoured reading of a text. The list is arranged
alphabetically by author according to text type.

Novels
Austen, Jane, Northanger Abbey, Penguin Classics, 1995 (1)
Northanger Abbey was the first of Jane Austen’s novels to be written and offered for publication,
although one of the last to actually be published. Originally titled ‘Susan’, the novel was most probably
written between 1798 and 1799, after Austen had made several extended visits to the English resort
town of Bath, its principal setting. The novel, a playful reworking of the Gothic fiction so popular in the
1790s, follows 17-year-old avid reader Catherine Morland to fashionable Bath, at the invitation of her
relatively rich family friends, the Allens. Here she meets both the Tilneys and the Thorpes. In a
development that subverts the tropes of popular fiction, naive Catherine quickly becomes enamored of
Henry Tilney and befriends the scheming Isabella Thorpe. Plot complication follows via the
introduction of siblings and an opportunity for Catherine to remove herself to the Tilney abode of
Northanger Abbey.
As Marilyn Butler comments in the introduction to the Penguin edition, Northanger Abbey is an
extended meditation on the ‘theme of reading’: of novels, of people and of ‘the world’. While Austen’s
original readers would undoubtedly have picked up on the nuances of her allusions to contemporary
novels and events, modern audiences will appreciate the way in which Catherine learns to read
outside her ‘genre expectations’. Northanger Abbey provides vivid insight into the obsessions of
Georgian England: of the emergence of consumer culture and the need to delineate ‘real’ taste from
vulgar ostentation. The novel is not only a perfect introduction to reader-response theory but also
invites scrutiny from feminist, Marxist and psychoanalytical perspectives. A number of television, stage
and web-series adaptations are available.

Cadwallader, Robyn, The Anchoress, Fourth Estate, 2015 (A) (2)

A scholar of medieval studies, Cadwallader writes about seventeen-year-old Sarah, living in England
in 1255. Cadwallader’s prose has been compared to Hilary Mantel’s; the story is told with historical
accuracy and the style is contemporary. Sarah voluntarily becomes an anchoress, a holy woman who
will spend her entire life locked in a small cell attached to the side of a church. This is as much a tale
of extreme isolation and self-abnegation as it is of community. Sarah gives up sunlight, most
communication with the outside world, and subjects herself to ascetic practices, as she struggles to
control her bodily needs and functions in order to experience her faith more profoundly.
Cadwallader skilfully draws the reader into this world, depicting both the painful and transcendent
aspects of Sarah’s psychological and physical journey. Beyond her interior life, Sarah is an important
member of her village: she has two servants who communicate the outside world to her; she
challenges a predatory feudal lord; she communes with priests from the local priory; and she
dispenses guidance and prayers to villagers. Cadwallader gives the reader a portrait of English
medieval life, particularly the complex relationships between peasants, landowners, and the church,
the brutal treatment of women, and the role of faith in society.

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The Anchoress provides a wonderful opportunity to explore the workings of an expansive mind and
the importance of valuing one’s voice in society. In keeping with Cadwallader’s historically accurate
depiction of medieval Christian worship, the novel contains descriptions of the effects of prolonged
fasting and self-flagellation, and teachers are advised to take these passages into consideration when
selecting this text.

Calvino, Italo, ‘The Baron in the Trees’, in Our Ancestors, Archibald Colquhoun (trans.),
Vintage, 1998 (3)
Baron Cosimo Piovasco di Rondo, on 5 June 1767, at the age of 12, rejects a plateful of snails at the
family dining table, climbs a tree and never again returns to earth. In adopting this eccentric life in the
trees, Cosimo creates a rich and adventure-filled world for himself. Italo Calvino’s ‘The Baron in the
Trees’ comes out of the author’s modernist period but looks forward to the bold experiments in form
which were to characterise his later post-modern work. Calvino makes use of allegory and
extraordinary characters and situations in order to depict the post-war loss of community and the
intellectual’s search for significance in a time of shattered illusions. No division exists between fantasy
and reality in this world. In keeping with its experimental, modernist aesthetic, the work contains
stylised depictions of sexuality, bodily functions, violence, war and death. The plot lines invite
interpretations that acknowledge the alienation and repressions framed by the discourses of Marx and
Freud but, as Calvino points out in his introduction, ‘no single key will turn all their locks’. Calvino’s
unreliable narrators expose the process of story-telling, making explicit the author’s fascination with
the writing process and his interest in the shifting nature of language.

Conrad, Joseph, Heart of Darkness, Penguin Classics, 2007 (4)

‘And this also,’ said Marlow suddenly, ‘has been one of the dark places of the earth’. So observes the
protagonist of Joseph Conrad’s novella, Heart of Darkness, anticipating his narration of the
nightmarish physical and psychological quest endured as he voyaged into the African interior in
search of the charismatic but depraved Mr Kurtz. Despite his towering presence in the novel, Kurtz
remains enigmatic throughout. He appears to have betrayed his unnamed ‘Intended’ with an unnamed
African mistress and to have betrayed noble intentions by degenerating into a mass murderer.
However, far more is said about him than by him and, although he is described as ‘an extremist’, it is
never made clear what he believed in before he went into the jungle.
A similarly elusive quality applies to other important aspects of the text. There is a dream-like quality
to Marlow’s time in the ‘sepulchral city’ and the nature of the commission he receives there is
somewhat vague. Marlow’s story occupies nearly the entire novella, yet he is being quoted by
someone else on a ship in the Thames – the actual narrator of the text remains anonymous. Although
the text can be read as a damning indictment of the Belgians in the Congo, the river at the centre of
the story is never identified. Marlow’s musings on colonialism suggest that the quest for power and the
capacity for savagery are timeless and universal.

Gaskell, Elizabeth, North and South, Penguin Classics, 2003 (3)

North and South was first published in serial form in Dickens’ Household Words between September
1854 and January 1855. Like Gaskell’s earlier Mary Barton (1848), North and South can be
considered a ‘Condition of England Novel’: a burgeoning genre in the 1840s and ’50s concerned with
possible solutions to social conflict created by industrialisation. Nineteenth-century readers did not
respond to Gaskell’s novel with much enthusiasm, some reviewers questioning the tastefulness of its
subject matter and others the female author’s credentials for her subject matter.

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North and South can now be seen as one of the earliest industrialist novels and one that challenged
contemporary thinking about the need to defend the traditional values of the South from the ‘evils’ of
the North. The story centres on the developing relationship between the novel’s heroine, Margaret
Hale – a proud woman whose family has fallen from a position of wealth and social status – and the
self-made industrialist, John Thornton. Gaskell weaves subplots that explore the degrading effects of
poverty, the nature of honour, and the potential for self-improvement and redemption.

Wright, Alexis, Carpentaria, Giramondo, 2006 (A) (1)

Set in the fictional north-west Queensland town Desperance, Carpentaria portrays a disparate
community plagued by internal divisions. The non-linear narrative draws on traditions of Indigenous
and biblical storytelling and engages with the complexity of individual human experience as well as
unresolvable social struggles. Unforgettable characters (Norm Phantom, Will Phantom, Elias, Angel
Day, Mozzie Fishman and others), whose stories weave in and out of the narrative, were created by
Wright ‘to demonstrate how the powerful essence of country is in our people’. The text lends itself to
postcolonial and psychoanalytical readings, and Wright does not shy away from exploring issues
plaguing contemporary Indigenous communities, such as substance abuse and deaths in custody.
However, the breadth of vision of this ambitious text extends far beyond the themes of dispossession,
racism and violence. The prose is sensuous and vital; this novel has an affirming and at times joyous
quality. Wright was awarded the Miles Franklin Award for Carpentaria in 2007. Additionally, it won the
Fiction Book Award in the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards, the Australian Literature Society
Gold Medal and the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction.

Stead, Christina, The Man Who Loved Children, The Miegunyah Press, 2011 (A) (4)
The Man Who Loved Children by Australian writer Christina Stead was first published in 1940, but it
was not until it was reissued in 1965 that it found widespread critical acclaim both within Australia and
beyond. In 2010, Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels
from 1923 to 2005.
Set in Washington DC in the 1930s, The Man Who Loved Children is a haunting story of dysfunctional
family life. Sam Pollitt is a brilliant and wilful man, one who has failed to outgrow childish self-
centredness. Sam is both loved and feared by his five children, who are never certain of the point at
which his enchanted games will slip into terrifying and cruel torment. His invention of a private
language, comprehensible only to his family, has its playful allure, and yet it places them all firmly
under his control within a tight family circle. In his excessive and maddening presence, his wife Henny
becomes too exhausted to nurture the children, who yearn for her attention. She finally finds a tragic
resolution in suicide. It is the children in their innocent vitality who bring both humour and pathos to the
story. Louie (Sam’s daughter by his first wife) is the heroine of the novel. She finally resists her father’s
manipulation and with the words of a loved teacher in mind, walks away as a young adolescent,
armed with a burning desire to write. While Stead examines the power of language to exclude and
control, she also reminds us that language provides an escape from oppression and an opportunity for
the creation of selfhood.

Vásquez, Juan Gabriel, The Sound of Things Falling, Anne McLean (trans.), Bloomsbury
Publishing, 2012 (3)
A contemporary example of Latin American literary noir fiction, The Sound of Things Falling
investigates the impact of the drug trade on the private lives of everyday Colombians. Set in Bogota
and the Colombian countryside during and after the most difficult years of the drug wars, it is narrated
retrospectively by the central character, law professor Antonio Yammara. Through the use of
flashbacks, the novel charts Antonio’s friendship with the mysterious ex-pilot Ricardo Laverde, whose
secretive past poses uncomfortable questions about expediency, corruption and thwarted ambition.

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When Antonio becomes the inadvertent witness to Ricardo’s murder, the profound effect of this
shocking event on the rest of Antonio’s life, both personal and professional, forms the backdrop of his
attempts to deal with his own post-traumatic stress. As the unwitting victim of a burgeoning wave of
violence and crime that comes to shape and define their country, Antonio perhaps typifies ordinary
Colombians struggling to comprehend the escalating brutality of the drug wars.
With echoes of the counter-culture movement of the ’60s and ’70s, when American peaceniks and
volunteers headed to the remote villages of South America, their youthful conviction is juxtaposed with
a more sinister reality. Moving between Bogota, the rural villages of Columbia and the United States,
The Sound of Things Falling is an intergenerational mystery that explores fate and destiny.

Winterson, Jeanette, The Passion, Vintage, 1996 (first published 1987) (2)
The Passion is set during the Napoleonic era and is narrated by French peasant Henri and Villanelle,
a Venetian croupier. Henri’s narrative depicts the gruesome nature of war and the often pathetic
reality of life for the disempowered, as Napoleon drives his troops into Russia during the Zero Winter.
Henri is Napoleon’s chicken chef and is devoted to his leader. Villanelle’s narrative begins in Venice, a
‘city of disguises’, where she is born the web-footed daughter of a boatman. While working at the
casino, she loses her heart to the ‘Queen of Spades’, a married woman who ultimately does not return
her love with the same intensity. Villanelle marries a rich man who eventually sells her to the French
army. The two narratives converge when Villanelle reaches Russia and meets Henri, who falls
obsessively in love with her. They escape together and return to Venice.
Winterson blends the magical and fabulous with the vulgar and violent, power and gender are central
concerns. Early in the novel there is an incident in which drunken soldiers visit a brothel and their
conduct is depicted with brutal realism. This scene and graphic images such as the soldier with his
feet frozen into the insides of a horse are juxtaposed with magical, fairy tale passages such as the one
in which Henri attempts to recover Villanelle’s heart from the house of her lover. The language is
economical yet richly lyrical, sensuous, and humorous. Both narratives involve convincing and moving
evocations of passion and what Villanelle calls ‘the silent space that is the pain of never having
enough.’ Winterson’s prose is assured, playful and vivacious as she tests the boundaries of
storytelling. The reader is repeatedly reminded that this is more historiographical metafiction than
history: ‘I’m telling you stories. Trust me.’

Plays
Bovell, Andrew, Speaking in Tongues, Currency Press, 2012 (A) (1)
In this contemporary play, first performed and published in 1998, Bovell explores the nature of
communication, and miscommunication, in human relationships. In Part One, we meet two suburban
couples whose marital relationships are awkward and failing. All parties desire more than they have,
but are locked into their own limitations and faults. As Bovell writes: ‘It maps an emotional landscape
typified by a sense of disconnection and a shifting moral code. It’s about people yearning for meaning
and grabbing onto small moments of hope and humour to combat an increasing sense of alienation.’
Part Two introduces a new set of characters, also experiencing dysfunction in their relationships, and
Part Three draws together the threads from the preceding parts, widening the focus to encompass
characters whose lives are perhaps somewhat peripheral to those in Part One but whose situations
parallel them to an uncanny degree, suggesting the universality of the playwright’s concerns.

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Throughout, the staging is striking and inventive. The use of a split stage, or a split lighting focus,
combined with mirrored actions and overlapping or intercutting dialogue, creates parallels between
scenes occurring contemporaneously or in different time frames. Although at times the audience is
aware of much more than the characters know, we still need to piece together the narrative at the end
and question ourselves about the nature of commitment and trust.
Bovell adapted his own stage play to create the screenplay for the highly successful film Lantana
(2001), directed by Ray Lawrence, which received numerous awards, including seven from the
Australian Film Institute.

Delaney, Shelagh, A Taste of Honey, Methuen Drama/Bloomsbury, 2016 (first produced 1958)
(2)
A Taste of Honey was written by 18-year-old Shelagh Delaney, allegedly because she felt she could
do better than well-known playwright Terrence Rattigan. Written in 10 days, it was her first play and
captured the ethos of the staid 1950s, poised on the brink of the ‘swinging sixties’. The play was
radical in its representation of working-class women from a working-class woman's point of view. It
also broke new ground in its sympathetic construction of a gay man and its non-stereotypical portrayal
of a black character.
Delaney’s subject matter – interracial sex, teenage pregnancy and homosexuality – taboo topics in the
conservative 1950s, is treated simply as part of life’s diversity. The central character, Jo, a restless
adolescent, lives with her somewhat vulgar mother, Helen, who is only interested in her new
boyfriend, Peter, an unpleasant but wealthy younger man. Jo meets Jimmy, a black sailor to whom
she becomes pregnant. He buys her an engagement ring and then leaves for a lengthy tour of duty.
Jo moves into a shabby bed-sit and soon meets a gay art student. He moves in with her and offers to
marry her but Helen arrives on the scene and forces him to move out. The fraught interactions
between the central characters explore ideas about mother-daughter relationships, friendship,
sexuality, homophobia and racism and the lack of options for women – especially working-class
women.
Adapted into an award-winning film, A Taste of Honey became one of the defining plays of 1950s
working-class and feminist movements.

‘Hippolytus’ (David Grene, trans.) in Euripides I, Mark Griffith, Glenn W. Most, David Grene
and Richmond Lattimore (eds and trans.), University of Chicago Press, 2013 (1)
Winner of the dramatic competition at the festival of Dionysus in 428 BCE and celebrated in the
classical past as one of Euripides’ best works, Hippolytus is a compelling play exploring love and
betrayal, speech and silence, divinity and mortality. Grene’s updated verse translation beautifully
realises Euripides’ poetry, revelling in the stylised horror of inescapable tragedy. Hippolytus offers
much to students both new to classical tragedy and more familiar with this form. The play is framed by
divine prologue and epilogue. The human drama of Phaedra, scorned and vengeful; of Hippolytus,
accused and betrayed; and of Theseus, angry and remorseful, remains compelling today.
There is a substantial amount of literary criticism about Hippolytus, and the play lends itself to feminist,
psychoanalytic, Marxist, new historicist and post-structuralist readings, as well as being rich in
imagery and stylistic features that reward close reading and analysis. While the violence, misogyny
and accusation of rape in the play are shocking, Euripides’ aching sympathy for his mortal characters
in the context of the pitilessness of his gods does not allow his audience to make superficial
judgements on the complex issues he raises. At the heart of this drama is Euripides’ anxiety about the
impact of a new technology that threatens his society. Though his concern was with writing itself, his
fear makes the play particularly relevant for us as we, too, find ourselves in the grip of a
technologically expanding world.

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Morrison, Toni, Desdemona, Oberon Modern Plays, 2012 (1)

Toni Morrison’s artistic collaboration with Malian singer and songwriter, Rokia Traoré, has produced a
powerful narrative which blurs generic boundaries. The text positions itself as a dialogue, not only with
Shakespeare’s Othello, but also with its many interpretations and critical commentaries. Morrison and
Traoré give voice to Shakespeare’s silenced characters and foreground the experiences of those
often marginalised by history and literary traditions. The play is set in an imagined after-life and
structured around a series of monologues and dialogues, mostly delivered by characters in Othello,
interspersed with songs written by Traoré.
A review of the play in Sydney (2015) described it as a ‘piercing inquest into the crime at the heart of
Othello, conducted by the victim herself’. What emerges from this interrogation of Othello is an
invitation to reflect on the values, assumptions and prejudices embedded in the original text.

Reza, Yasmina, Art, Christopher Hampton (trans.), Faber and Faber, 1996 (2)
First produced in Paris in 1994, Yasmina Reza’s comedy Art is a much-awarded play in the English-
speaking world as well as in France, including a Tony Award for the Best Play (1998), the Laurence
Olivier Award for Best New Comedy (1998) and the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best
Play (1998).
Three long-time friends find their friendship, values and philosophical perspectives tested when one of
them buys a large canvas by a much-celebrated contemporary artist. The work is pure white except
for some scarcely perceptible diagonal white lines. Serge proudly tells his friends that it was a ‘steal’,
at the (then astronomical) price of 200,000 francs. As an art follower and one who embraces
modernity, he is delighted with his purchase, particularly since the artist has three works hanging in
the Pompidou Centre. He is keen to show it to Marc and Yvan. Marc spares no feelings as he accuses
his friend of snobbishness, of being duped by market value, of having lost his sense of discernment.
The dialogue between different pairings, and then between the three together, is fast moving,
searingly close to the bone as the discussion moves from aesthetics and philosophy to personal
recrimination, and very funny. This dialogue is interspersed by monologues from each of the
characters, as they reveal to the audience the vulnerabilities they’re not yet ready to share with each
other. Their taunts are expressed crudely at times, but always with a light pace and humour. Reza
raises questions of aesthetics, modernity, market value in the world of high art, and the factors
shaping ‘taste’.

Shakespeare, William, Othello, Cambridge Schools, 2014 (1)

William Shakespeare’s Othello is set in the 16th century. The play begins in Venice, but quickly moves
to Cyprus, as the Venetians attempt to defend the island. Leading the Venetian army in the battle is
Othello, not a native Venetian, but a Moor, an outsider, unquestioningly given the role of General due
to his incomparable skills in battle and warfare. However, accepting Othello as General of the army
appears to be the limit of acceptance from many, including Brabantio. As Desdemona, the daughter of
Brabantio, marries Othello in secret, Othello is accused of using magic to steal the much desired
Desdemona. Othello has already proven his worthiness to lead the Venetian army, yet he must further
prove himself to be worthy of marrying one of their own, both to Venice and himself.
To make this even more difficult is Othello’s supposedly loyal ensign, Iago. Not being chosen by
Othello to be his Lieutenant, Iago attempts to destroy Othello, not through warfare, but through subtle
and patient psychological manipulation. Preying on his fears, insecurities, and jealousy, Iago attempts
to destroy Othello while charming us, the audience into an incongruence of loathing and admiration.
Charming villains such as Lucifer, in Milton’s Paradise Lost; Walter White, in Breaking Bad; and Frank
Underwood in House of Cards have all been influenced by the irresistibly villainous Iago.

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Shakespeare, William, Twelfth Night (Cambridge School Shakespeare), Anthony Partington

and Richard Spencer (eds), Cambridge University Press, 2014 (3)
Twelfth Night, or What You Will, most probably written and first performed in 1601 during the height of
Shakespeare’s career, is now considered to be one of his most popular plays – although it was widely
neglected until the mid-18th century. The play draws its title from the Elizabethan festival of the 12th,
or last, night of the Christmas festive season, which, drawing on pagan rituals of carnival and
Saturnalia, was an occasion for revelry and misrule. It is generally thought that Shakespeare adapted
his story from Barnabe Riche’s ‘Apollonius and Silla’ (1581), itself an adaptation of earlier plots
featuring a girl disguised as a boy who courts a girl on behalf of her master.
In Shakespeare’s version of the comedy, set in Illyria on the Adriatic coast, Duke Orsino pines for the
love of Countess Olivia, who has sworn to mourn her brother for seven years, while in Olivia’s
household her uncle, Sir Toby Belch, carouses with the servants and the gullible Sir Andrew
Aguecheek, who is also love-struck by Olivia. Add to this the arrival of the shipwrecked Viola, who,
believing her twin brother Sebastian drowned, disguises herself as a eunuch and enters the
employment of the Duke, with whom she falls in love. Through Twelfth Night, Shakespeare explores
love in all its manifestations. Disguises, twinning, dualities and mistaken identity all contribute to a
general sense of madness – and, for the modern audience, interesting observations about the
construction of gender.

Shepard, Sam, Buried Child, Vintage Books, 2006 (3)

First performed in 1978, Buried Child is the quintessential American tragedy. It tells of a fragmented
farming family, plagued by a secret during the rural economic slowdown of the 1970s. It won the 1979
Pulitzer Prize for Drama and established Sam Shepard’s reputation as a playwright.
Vince, the 22-year-old grandson of an ageing patriarch, returns to his grandparents’ farmhouse in
Illinois after a long absence. Although Vince is reunited with his father, uncle and grandparents, they
do not recognise him and he cannot make sense of their strange actions. On the surface, the family
had seemed like the embodiment of the American Dream, but within the walls of the house Vince and
his girlfriend, Shelley, encounter the stuff of nightmares: erratic melancholic behaviours fuelled by
alcohol escalating into verbal threats and physical violence. Vince’s relatives are divided from each
other by conflict, but bound tightly by the dark secret they share – the child buried in the cornfield.
These disturbing issues combine elements of family drama with American gothic and Shepard evokes
both Greek tragedy and dark comedy. In this post-modern mix, the play maintains a stark realism: the
aftermath of violence, the grip of the past on the present, the gap between dreams and reality, and the
need to confront unpalatable truths. When the buried child is unearthed, the family curse seems to lift
and corn can grow again in long-barren fields. Thus the play ends on a note of hope, with imagery of
regrowth.

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Williams, Tennessee, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Penguin Modern Classics, 2009 (3)
Winning Tennessee Williams his second Pulitzer Prize (the first being for A Streetcar Named Desire),
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, was first performed in 1955 on Broadway. It was directed by Elia Kazan and
ran for close to 700 performances. Brooks Atkinson’s review in the New York Times (25 March 1955)
described the play as a ‘delicately wrought exercise in human communication, where the characters
try to escape from the loneliness of their private lives’. Set in the home of a wealthy Mississippi cotton
tycoon, the play is a social critique of nouveau-riche life in the South, and explores issues of greed,
jealousy, family secrets and repressed sexuality.
The neurotic, dysfunctional Pollitt family has gathered for the 65th birthday of Big Daddy. To ensure a
happy celebration, the family lies to Big Mama and Big Daddy about the result of Big Daddy’s test for
terminal cancer. The family’s dishonesty and the deadly imagery of spreading cancer are symbolic of
the Pollitts’ inability to face some very uncomfortable truths, and of the destructive effect that this has
on their relationships. With its cast of vulnerable characters, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a poignant
drama about the need for honesty and understanding, the pressures of family expectations and the
risks of admitting to failure.

Short stories
Beneba Clarke, Maxine, Foreign Soil, Hachette, 2014 (A) (2)
This collection of short stories won the Victorian Premier’s Unpublished Manuscript Award in 2013
and gained its writer a three-book deal with international publisher Hachette. Described in Overland as
‘a small tidal wave crashed into the face of the current Australian literary landscape’, Beneba Clarke
inhabits the voice of characters from all over the world – from suburban Australia to Jamaica to Brixton
– and comes to the fore in Foreign Soil.
In ‘David’, a ‘shiny cherry-red’ bike becomes an unlikely site of connection between a young woman of
Sudanese background and an older, seemingly disapproving, ‘Auntie’. Beneba Clarke returns to the
streets of 1980s ‘suburban blond-brick Australia’ in ‘Shu Yi’, to depict the bullying meted out to a shy
and beautiful young girl when she arrives at a new primary school in a new country. Told entirely in
Jamaican patois, ‘Big Islan’ explores the connection between literacy, knowledge and restlessness,
while ‘The Stilt Fisherman of Kathaluna’ is set inside Sydney’s notorious Villawood detention centre.
This story shifts in perspective between Asanka, a young asylum seeker, and his lawyer, Loretta. The
final story, ‘The Sukiyaki Book Club’, is the most openly autobiographical in the collection. A young
mother, living in a dilapidated flat overlooking the train line in Footscray, struggles to think of an
ending for a story while the trains roll by and her children watch Giggle and Hoot.
There is some confronting language in a number of these stories that matches their confronting
subject matter, but Beneba Clarke writes in a way that is at once colourful, captivating, familiar and
disturbing.

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Dovey, Ceridwen, Only the Animals, Hamish Hamilton Penguin (Australia), 2014 (A) (2)
Born in South Africa, Ceridwen Dovey spent her childhood between South Africa and Australia and
attended North Sydney Girls High School before completing a degree at Harvard University (USA) in
Anthropology and Visual and Environmental Studies. Her debut novel was the celebrated Blood Kin
(2007) and her second book, Only the Animals, was shortlisted for the 2015 Victorian Premier's
Literary Awards. With her anthropologist’s eye, Dovey looks at human beings from the viewpoint of
other species. She creates a diverse range of anthropomorphised (and also deceased) creatures who
speak eloquently about their relationships with some famous (and infamous) humans, including
Heinrich Himmler, Leo Tolstoy and Sylvia Plath. Dovey constantly blurs the boundaries between
human and animal; it is the ‘souls’ of the creatures that tell the stories, an attribute considered
exclusively human.
One of the most compelling stories, ‘Hundstag’, is a tale of loyalty and betrayal concerning Himmler
and a German wolfhound, and it invites us to reflect on the kinds of relationships that demand
unconditional loyalty and obedience. The souls of other animals caught up in human conflict include a
mussel that hitches a ride on a US naval ship bound for a war zone and a parrot, deeply traumatised
by the mindless violence in Beirut. These highly original narrative perspectives compel us to stand
back from history and politics and consider the devastating effects of prolonged violent conflicts on all
living creatures. Only the Animals won the inaugural Readings New Australian Writing Award 2014
and the Steele Rudd Award (Short Story Collection) at the 2014 Queensland Literary Awards.

Gogol, Nikolay, The Diary of a Madman, The Government Inspector and Selected Stories,
Penguin Classics, 2005 (4)
Perhaps the most well-known story in the collection is ‘The Overcoat’, which establishes the humble
minion Akaky Akakievich as the central character. After saving for months to purchase a much-
needed new overcoat, he experiences an evening of joy before it is stolen from him by street thugs.
Faced with indifference from government officials and his peers, he dies cold and lonely before
returning as a ghost to punish those who failed him in life. Other stories in the collection explore
human foibles and satirise the trivial nature of human tensions and expectations.
Along with Nikolay Gogol’s novel, Dead Souls, ‘The Overcoat’ is considered to have laid the
foundations of the 19th-century tradition of Russian realism. This collection of Gogol’s tragicomic
stories is set in mid-19th-century Russian society. The characters are burdened by bureaucracy, rigid
social convention, censorship and the alienating ennui of modernity.

Other literature
Fitzpatrick, Sheila, My Father’s Daughter: Memories of an Australian Childhood, Melbourne
University Press, 2010 (A) (4)
Sheila Fitzpatrick, a world authority on Soviet Russia, writes about her upbringing in post-war
suburban Melbourne. The memoir’s main focus is on her difficult relationship with her father, Brian, an
influential historian and left-wing political dissident described by one ASIO informant as a ‘pleasant
rogue’. Much of Brian’s work as a prominent libertarian activist is determined by the Cold War and its
effect on the national political climate.
Brian’s drinking and feckless disregard of family responsibilities costs the family heavily. Her father’s
reputation as a ‘commie’ leads to her memories of ostracism and harassment at school. As a largely
‘unemployed bohemian’, Brian has no car and the family live in rented accommodation. Brian talks
openly to his family about his extra-marital affairs and on one drunken occasion even addresses his
children by the names of his girlfriends. Taught to question authority, Sheila begins to question her
parents, particularly Brian. Where she once saw his actions as ‘heroic’, she begins to ask whether his

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dissidence is ‘self-indulgent’. As she matures, her ambivalence gives way to hostility and rifts between
them. Her relationship with her mother, Doff, is also fraught, though for different reasons.
Fitzpatrick explores the fluidity and unreliability of memory, while addressing the complicated nature of
family relationships, grief and loss. As an evocation of a daughter’s love for her father, the memoir is
moving and at times painful, though seldom sentimental.

Voltaire, Candide, or Optimism, Theo Cuffe (ed. and trans.), Penguin Classics, 2005 (3)
Voltaire was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher who promoted freedom of
religion, freedom of speech and the separation of church and state. Candide, his best known work,
was published in 1759, and Voltaire became Europe’s most famous public intellectual. This
philosophical essay, follows the journey of Candide, the eponymous hero whose sheltered life, spent
studying Leibnizian philosophy with Dr Pangloss, is thrown off course by the disappearance of
Cunégonde, a young, virtuous and beautiful aristocrat with whom he has fallen in love. As he
searches for her, Candide becomes disillusioned by the wars and natural disasters he witnesses,
including the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. With over 100,000 people killed, it is one of the most deadly
earthquakes in history. Candide’s response to the catastrophes he encounters is an attack on
Leibnizian optimism, with deeper questions raised about all accepted systems of thought and belief.
Candide is eventually reunited with Cunégonde, who has been sexually exploited and reduced to
servitude. The sight of Cunégonde, no longer innocent and beautiful, reaffirms Candide’s pessimistic
view of such an unkind world, where innocence and beauty cannot survive and it decisively negates
the Leibnizian view of the universe that God created, as the best of all possible worlds.

Woolf, Virginia, A Room of One’s Own (1929), Vintage, 2001 (2)

Based on a series of lectures delivered at two women’s colleges at Cambridge University in 1928, A
Room of One’s Own examines the social, economic and material conditions that have, since the time
of Shakespeare, affected the ability of women to write literature. In this essay, long considered a key
work in 20th-century feminism, Woolf constructs a tradition of female writers – including Aphra Behn,
Jane Austen and the Brontës – but also explores the limitations placed upon these women as a result
of their gender.
The title of the essay relates to Woolf’s now famous observation that ‘a woman must have money and
a room of her own if she is to write fiction’ and the essay revolves around an oftentimes rather witty
series of vignettes exploring the circumstances of both real and imagined women writers. Perhaps the
most affecting of these is the story of Shakespeare’s fictional sister, Judith. Judith Shakespeare, Woolf
writes, is every bit as clever as her famous brother, but when she goes to the theatre to enquire about
becoming an actress she is propositioned by the theatre manager. She eventually becomes pregnant
by the only theatre manager who will take pity on her and, in despair, commits suicide one winter’s
night and lies buried at some crossroads where omnibuses now stop.

Poetry
Browning, Robert, Selected Poems, Penguin Classics, 2004 (4)
Along with his contemporary Lord Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning (1812–89) is one of the most
prolific and financially successful of England’s Victorian poets. He and his wife Elizabeth Barrett
Browning are renowned for conducting much of their love affair through passionate poetry, and for
freeing themselves from family ties by living and raising their son in Italy, mainly Florence.
Browning is best remembered for his dramatic monologues – a conversational genre through which a
speaker addresses a listener (and thereby the reader) in confidential tone, in order to reveal the

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nature of his characters (‘Porphyria’s Lover’, ‘My Last Duchess’, ‘Andrea del Sarto’, ‘Fra Filippo Lippi’,
for example). Ironically, his narrators are often sinister characters themselves, and through tone,
mood and disingenuous ‘objectivity’, Browning leads the reader to question the truth of their words.
This interest in the complex motives and influences of people means that in many of his poems
Browning’s own voice is disguised or hidden. This is not so, however, in all of his poems. ‘Two in the
Campagna’ has been written of as ‘a poem of unexpected self-revelation’.
Browning’s form is varied. Heroic and open couplets, jaunty rhythms and rhymes, enjambment,
caesura and tongue-in-cheek tone contrast with wistful melancholy, and his concern with human
frailty, false pretences and disguise gives his poetry contemporary resonance.

Chang, Tina, Handal, Nathalie and Shankar, Ravi (eds), Language for a New Century:
Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond, WW Norton & Company, 2008
(3)
In the aftermath of 11 September 2001, Chang, Handal and Shankar (all poets who were born into
families from non-Western backgrounds) decided to respond ‘to the destruction and unjust loss of
human lives [in New York] while protesting the one-sided and flattened view of the East being
showcased in the media’. This anthology of poetry is the result. It gathers together poems written in 40
different languages (in translation), from 61 nations and from 400 poets, in the belief that these
diverse poetic voices would ‘converge in the dream of shared utterance’, confounding otherness or, at
least, writing it into visibility. ‘In putting this anthology together’, they write, ‘we had an alternative
vision of the new century in which words, not weapons, could define our civilisation’.
The poems are in many forms: lyric, narrative, dramatic monologues, prose and more. They represent
richly diverse material worlds and cultural traditions. Reading one poem alongside others, the reader
is invited to move beyond personal perceptions and understandings, and glimpse or share sensibilities
across cultures. The common ground is striking – in evocation of childhood worlds; in relationship to
homeland; in experience of loss or exile; in yearning for love, and peace and security.
The poems chosen for study come from the first three of the book’s nine sections: ‘In the Grasp of
Childhood Fields’, ‘Parsed into Colors’ and ‘Slips and Atmospherics’. They move from the
experience/memory of ‘home’ to the experience of migration or exile, and then to the riches and
surprises of language, which make it possible to tell the story of our own life.

White, Petra , A Hunger, John Leonard Press, 2018 (revised edition) (A) (1)
Petra White has emerged as a highly regarded Australian poet during the past decade. ‘A Hunger’
incorporates White’s two previous collections and shows an expansion of her poetic concerns as she
looks back to Renaissance poets and becomes more deeply philosophical. Beginning with ‘Thirteen
Love Poems’, White alludes to Neruda’s ‘Twenty Love Poems’ but her exploration of love is less
concerned with sensuality and passion than with questions about what constitutes love. She writes of
joyful, all-consuming love, but also conveys a need to distance herself and reclaim her soul.
Other poems speak of memories, relationships and significant places – particularly in Australia. White
explores aspects of city life and the natural world, seeing below the surface of things where ‘skill tugs
at the muscles and drives the bones’. She moves easily between odes, elegies, lyric sequences and
near-sonnets and shows considerable technical flair, particularly in the use of metaphor. A cleaning
woman, for example, is a moonwalker, trailing her cargo through ‘an obsidian triangle’ of city offices.
As a celebration of the fluidity and flexibility of language, the poems’ strong impact will be more fully
appreciated when they are spoken aloud and listened to. They also provide a rich and rewarding
source for close analysis and will accommodate differing literary perspectives.

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The poems selected for study cover a range of forms, from the ode to the near-sonnet, and Literature
students will find intertextual references to such poets as Donne, Shakepeare, Keats and Dante. In
her utilisation and subversion of forms and voices, White endows her poetry with a rich texture of
complexity and multiple levels of meaning.

Plath, Sylvia, Ariel, Faber Modern Classics, 2015 (2)

The American poet Sylvia Plath (1932–63) was a brilliant student who suffered all her short life from
severe clinical depression. Her father, a German professor of entomology, died when she was only
eight, yet his influence is obvious in some of her poems (for example, ‘Daddy’). Plath’s marriage to the
British poet Ted Hughes brought her great happiness for a time, but ended in their separation a year
before she committed suicide. She delighted in her two young children (see ‘You’re’ and ‘Nick and the
Candlestick’) but was often resentful of the way her domestic duties impinged on her freedom and
restricted her writing (‘Tulips’). Her poems are deeply confessional and often reflect her despair and
the appeal of the peace she imagined she would find in death. She found solace in the natural word
but, at times, when she looked into the night sky, she could find only blackness (‘The Moon and the
Yew Tree’). Her poems are beautifully crafted, demonstrating a range of forms, and her metaphors
are often startling, but strangely apposite.
The poems are accessible to students and provide opportunities for a feminist reading, among others.
Plath is acknowledged as one of the outstanding poets of the 20th century. She was awarded a
Posthumous Pulitzer Prize for her Selected Poems.

Wagan Watson, Samuel, Smoke Encrypted Whispers, University of Queensland Press, 2004
(A) (2)
Samuel Wagan Watson was born in Brisbane in 1972; he is of Birri-Gubba, Mununjali, Dutch and Irish
descent, and part of a family noted for its cultural richness, diversity and achievement. Wagan
Watson’s poetry explores his world and his responses to it. The metaphor of the journey is a unifying
strand throughout the collection. Barely punctuated, his verse slides through his consciousness, his
parameters expanding from the ‘white stucco’ of Mt Gravatt to the ‘smoke encrypted whispers’ of ‘one
of Brisbane’s least known burial grounds’, his strongly evoked sense of place fusing with an intricate
awareness of the complexities of understanding and responding to experience. The subject matter is
the man, the poet and his world, both personal and public. He writes of the desolation and beauty of
nature, of the ugliness of the urban landscape, of the trivial and of the metaphysical, of what divides
us and what connects us, of the damage done by colonisation, and of the irrepressibility of the human
spirit.
He acknowledges the influence of Japanese poet Basho, who relinquished his sword to spend his life
wandering and writing poetry.
His voice is engaging, evoking the riotous energy of ‘The Happy Dark’ symbolised by his ‘White
Stucco Dreaming’. Such is the vitality with which he creates the icons of his suburban roots that he
can claim that the ‘police cars that crawled up and down the back streets’ were ‘wishing they were
with us’. Wagan Watson’s fresh and unconventional use of language can jerk readers into fresh
realisations about a landscape with which they are familiar.

Wallace-Crabbe, Chris, New and Selected Poems, Carcanet, 2013 (A) (4)
Chris Wallace-Crabbe AM is an Australian poet and Emeritus Professor in the Australian Centre,
University of Melbourne. He began publishing poetry while still an undergraduate and, over the years,
has won a number of prizes. His Selected Poems: 1956–1994 won both the Dinny O'Hearn Poetry
Prize and the 1995 Age Book of the Year Award. Wallace-Crabbe was born in Richmond and his
poems are often set in Melbourne. In ‘Cho Ben Tanh: Richmond’, for example, a miscellany of vibrant

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images creates a bustling multicultural landscape. His wide-ranging poetic concerns are centred on
the world of everyday experience – its quotidian beauty, its sensuous complexity and the multifaceted,
rapidly changing reality it offers us.
Wallace-Crabbe’s exploration of the forms, colours and modes of experience lead to meditations on
place, existence and relationships, and the glimpses of these we are offered are always tentative and
provisional of meaning and truth. His poems test the power and the limits of language as he moves
from serious to comic and between hope and despair. His poetic voice, sometimes innocent,
sometimes urbane, is always alive to the miracle of life, yet in some of his later poems an awareness
of mortality emerges: a shadow under a clothesline, for example, evokes a quiet reflection that ‘all
things pass’.
Poet and critic Lisa Gorton (winner of the Victorian Premier's Prize for Poetry) said that Wallace-
Crabbe ‘marked the suburbs out as a place for poetry’, but not in an ‘enclosed’ way because his
poems have ‘a suddenness and strangeness’. She describes him as one of the great Australian poets
and an influential mentor and teacher.

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