Letters to Live Poets
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Letters to Live Poets (1969) is the fourth poetry collection by the Australian poet Bruce Beaver. It won the Grace Leven Prize for Poetry in 1970.[1]
The collection consists of 34 poems, all of which are published in this collection for the first time.[1]
Contents
All of the poems in the collection are titled and numbered in sequence using Roman numerals, except for the first which is titled "Letters to Live Poets : Frank O'Hara". Frank O'Hara was an American poet who was killed in a car accident in 1966.
Critical reception
The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature called it Beaver's "major work" and noted that the book formed a "livre composé", a volume designed not as a collection of poems, but as a single poem, sustained through changing moods and verse-forms. They also note that the book was written "with obsessional purpose and speed, because Beaver believed he was losing his rationality".[2]
In a long essay examining the book's legacy and influence, Robert Savage notes, "The American influences on Letters to Live Poets, particular the influence of American confessional poetry, are well documented, and prompt James Tulip to call Letters «the most American work to have come out of Australia.»"[3]
Awards
- 1970 - winner Grace Leven Prize for Poetry
See also
- 1969 in Australian literature
- 1969 in poetry
References
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- Pacific Sea by Nan McDonald (1947)
- A Drum for Ben Boyd by Francis Webb (1948)
- Woman to Man by Judith Wright (1949)
- No award (1950)
- The Great South Land : An Epic Poem by Rex Ingamells (1951)
- Between Two Tides by R. D. Fitzgerald (1952)
- Tumult of the Swans by Roland Robinson (1953)
- Thirty Poems by John Thompson (1954)
- The Wandering Islands by A. D. Hope (1955)
- No award (1956)
- Elegiac and Other Poems by Leonard Mann (1957)
- Antipodes in Shoes by Geoffrey Dutton (1958)
- The Wind at Your Door by R. D. Fitzgerald (1959)
- Man in a Landscape by Colin Thiele (1960)
- Time on Fire by Thomas Shapcott (1961)
- Southmost Twelve by R. D. Fitzgerald (1962)
- The North-Bound Rider by Ian Mudie (1963)
- All the Room by David Rowbotham (1964)
- The Ilex Tree by Les Murray and Geoffrey Lehmann (1965)
- The Talking Clothes: Poems by William Hart-Smith (1966)
- Collected Poems 1936-1967 by Douglas Stewart (1967)
- Selected Poems 1942-1968 by David Campbell (1968)
- A Counterfeit Silence: Selected Poems by Randolph Stow (1969)
- Letters to Live Poets by Bruce Beaver (1970)
- Judith Wright: Collected Poems, 1942-1970 by Judith Wright (1971)
- Collected Poems 1936-1970 by James McAuley (1971)
- Head-waters by Peter Skrzynecki (1972)
- A Soapbox Omnibus by Rodney Hall (1973)
- Neighbours in a Thicket: Poems by David Malouf (1974)
- Selected Poems (1975) by Gwen Harwood (1975)
- Selected Poems 1939–1975 by John Blight (1976)
- Selected Poems by Robert Adamson (1977)
- Sometimes Gladness : Collected Poems 1954-1978 by Bruce Dawe (1978)
- The Man in the Honeysuckle by David Campbell (1979)
- The Boys Who Stole the Funeral by Les Murray (1980)
- Nero's Poems: Translations of the Public and Private Poems of the Emperor Nero by Geoffrey Lehmann (1981)
- Tide Country by Vivian Smith (1982)
- Collected Poems by Peter Porter (1983)
- The Three Fates and Other Poems by Rosemary Dobson (1984)
- Selected Poems 1963-1983 by Robert Gray (1985)
- The Amorous Cannibal by Chris Wallace-Crabbe (1985)
- Washing the Money : Poems with Photographs by Rhyll McMaster (1986)
- Occasions of Birds and Other Poems by Elizabeth Riddell (1987)
- Under Berlin by John Tranter (1988)
- A Tremendous World in Her Head by Dorothy Hewett (1989)
- No award (1990)
- Dog Fox Field by Les Murray (1991)
- Empire of Grass by Gary Catalano (1992)
- Peniel by Kevin Hart (1992)
- The End of the Season by Philip Hodgins (1993)
- No award (1994)
- New and Selected Poems by Kevin Hart (1995)
- Flying the Coop : New and Selected Poems 1972-1994 by Rhyll McMaster (1995)
- Path of Ghosts: poems 1986-93 by Jemal Sharah (1995)
- No award (1996)
- The Undertow: New and Selected Poems by John Kinsella (1997)
- No award (1998)
- No award (1999)
- No award (2000)
- Darker and Lighter by Geoff Page (2001)
- Versary by Kate Lilley (2002)
- Lost in the Foreground by Stephen Edgar (2003)
- Totem by Luke Davies (2004)
- Next to Nothing by Noel Rowe (2005)
- The Past Completes Me: Selected Poems 1973-2003 by Alan Gould (2006)
- The Goldfinches of Baghdad by Robert Adamson (2007)
- The Australian Popular Songbook by Alan Wearne (2008)
- No award (2009)
- Phantom Limb by David Musgrave (2010)
- No award (2011)
- Another Fine Morning in Paradise by Michael Sharkey (2012)