12 December 2007
The necessity of poetry with Barry Hill
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Food, water, shelter and clothing are the necessities of life but for Barry Hill, poetry should also be on the list.
His fifth collection of poems is called Necessity and it riffs on politics, spirituality and nature. It reveals his influences including the romantic poet Shelley, the political theorist Gramsci, and the Nobel prize winning Polish-American poet Milosz.
Barry Hill is an acclaimed writer in several genres, having won Premiers' Awards for poetry and non-fiction.
Most recently Broken Song, his biography of Australian anthropologist TGH Strehlow, won a National Biography Award and the Tasman-Pacific Bicentenary History Prize.
Barry Hill is Poetry Editor of The Australian, and lives in Queenscliff, Victoria, where he has been writing full-time for the last 30 years.
His most recent books include The War Sonnets, by Picaro Press and Necessity: Poems 1996- 2006 by Soi3 Modern Poets.
For the Book Show Alicia Sometimes spoke to Barry Hill in our Melbourne studio.
He begins with a reading from his collection with a poem called Rumi's Dancing Shoes.
Guests
Barry Hill
Biographer and poet, and poetry editor of The Australian
Publications
Title: Necessity: Poems 1996- 2006
Author: Barry Hill
Publisher: Soi3 Modern Poets
ISBN: 0-9579411-6-1
Presenter
Alicia Sometimes
Producer
Sarah L'Estrange
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