Lisa Gorton Explained

Lisa Gorton
Birth Date:1972
Occupation:Poet and novelist
Language:English
Nationality:Australian
Notableworks:The Life of Houses
Awards:2016 Prime Minister's Literary Awards – Fiction
Years Active:1993-

Lisa Gorton (born 1972) is an Australian poet, novelist, literary editor and essayist.[1] She is the author of four award-winning poetry collections: Press Release,[2] Hotel Hyperion,[3] Empirical,[4] and Mirabilia.[5] Her second novel, The Life of Houses, received the NSW Premier's People's Choice Award for Fiction[6] and the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction (shared).[7] Gorton is also the editor of Black Inc's anthology Best Australian Poems 2013.[8]

Education

Gorton was educated at the University of Melbourne and at University of Oxford.[9] At Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar, Gorton completed an MPhil in Renaissance Literature and a DPhil on John Donne.[9] She received the John Donne Society Award for Outstanding Publication in Donne Studies.[10]

Career

In 1994 she was awarded the inaugural Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize.[11]

Having previously worked as poetry editor for the Australian Book Review, Gorton was selected as ABR Poet of the Month in October 2019.[12] [13] Gorton has contributed essays to the Australian Book Review and the Sydney Review of Books.[14], she is poetry editor of Island Magazine.[15]

She is the granddaughter of the former Prime Minister John Gorton.

Writing

Gorton's poetry has been widely anthologised, including in The Turnrow Anthology of Contemporary Australian Poetry,[16] The Best Australian Poems series (2008,[17] 2009,[18] 2010,[19] 2011,[20] 2012,[21] 2014,[22] 2015[23]), Contemporary Australian Feminist Poetry,[24] the Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry,[25] the Poetry Magazine May 2016 selection of Australian poetry, edited by Robert Adamson, with photographs by Juno Gemes,[26] and online anthologies Poetry International and lyrikline.[27] Her poetry can also be found online at Cordite magazine.[28]

Gorton's essays have been published in the Sydney Review of Books[29] and Australian Book Review,[30] and in the essay collection Australian Face.[31] Gorton wrote the introductory essay for the Text Classics reissue of Christina Stead's novel The Little Hotel.[32] She also wrote the catalogue essay for Izabela Pluta's artwork Apparent Distance in the 2019 exhibition The National at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.[33]

Gorton is interested in ekphrastic poetry. She has composed a series of poems for Izabela Pluta's artist's book Figures of Slippage and Oscillation.[34] She has also written ekphrastic poems for the catalogue of the 2010 Adelaide Biennial of Contemporary Art Before and After Science,[35] for the exhibition Conversations in Ellipsis,[36] and for the Melbourne Now limited edition volume from the National Gallery of Victoria.[37]

Gorton gave a poetry reading at TEDx Sydney in 2010.[38]

Awards and recognition

Gorton's awards for poetry include the Victorian Premier's Prize for Poetry,[30] the Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize,[10] and the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal.[39] Her novel The Life of Houses was awarded the New South Wales Premier's People's Choice Award, and the Prime Minister's Fiction Prize.[6]  

Her poetry books have also been shortlisted in the Prime Minister's Prize for Poetry,[40] the Mary Gilmore Poetry Prize,[41] the Melbourne Prize for Literature Best Writing Award, and the NSW Premier's Poetry Award.[42]

Critical response

On Empirical

Jessica Wilkinson, poet and editor of Rabbit magazine, interviewed Gorton about her poetry collection Empirical, noting Lisa's interest in "how a feeling for place originates".[51] In the Sydney Review of Books, poet and critic Michael Farrell suggests that Gorton's poetry collection Empirical offers "models of 3D thought", remarking that "Gorton reanimates - and translates - historical textual materials into contemporary poetry", and that her work "performs as an antidote to nationalist ideology".[52] In The Sydney Morning Herald, James Antoniou writes: "an important voice is breaking through here: assured, polyphonic and, for all its quietness, visionary".[53]

On The Life of Houses

In the Sydney Review of Books, Kerryn Goldsworthy writes about Gorton's debut novel The Life of Houses:[54] "One of the main reasons for Gorton's status as a highly respected, prize-winning Australian poet is her unique and personal angle of vision on the world. It's something that, as Auden surmises, cannot be taught…For Gorton it seems not so much a matter of finding le mot juste as of making something entirely new: not merely choosing the word or naming the non-verbal thing it represents, but of using metaphor to create a new and separate third entity in which a word or phrase brings an inchoate, intangible feeling, sensation or memory out of the shadows and into the sunlight of consciousness."

Works

Poetry

Individual poems have been published in HEAT,[55] Poetry,[56] The Best Australian Poems 2008, The Best Australian Poems 2009, The Best Australian Poems 2010, and The Best Australian Poems 2012.

Novels

Edited

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: HOME. 2021-06-25. Mysite. en.
  2. Web site: Press Release. 2021-06-25. Giramondo Publishing. en-AU.
  3. Web site: Hotel Hyperion. 2021-06-25. Giramondo Publishing. en-AU.
  4. Web site: Empirical. 2021-06-25. Giramondo Publishing. en-AU.
  5. Web site: 2023-03-01 . Mirabilia Poetry by Lisa Gorton . 2024-11-08 . Giramondo Publishing . en-AU.
  6. Web site: 2016-07-15. Joanne Burns and Lisa Gorton Winners of NSW Premier's Literary Awards. 2021-06-25. Giramondo Publishing. en-AU.
  7. Web site: Guardian Staff. 2016-11-08. Prime Minister's Literary awards 2016: Lisa Gorton and Charlotte Wood share fiction prize. 2021-06-25. the Guardian. en.
  8. Book: The Best Australian Poems 2013 by Lisa Gorton. 2013-09-17. en.
  9. Web site: Lisa Gorton (poet) - Australia - Poetry International . 2021-06-25 . www.poetryinternational.org.
  10. Web site: Lisa Gorton. 25 June 2021. Red Room Poetry. en.
  11. Web site: Lisa Gorton: Prize-winning poet writes her first novel. Sullivan. Jane. 17 April 2015. The Sydney Morning Herald. en. 22 March 2020.
  12. Web site: Lisa Gorton. Australian Book Review. en-gb. 22 March 2020.
  13. Web site: Lisa Gorton is Poet of the Month. October 2019. Australian Book Review. No. 415. en-gb. 22 March 2020.
  14. Web site: Lisa Gorton. Sydney Review of Books. en. 22 March 2020.
  15. Web site: Meet the Team. 15 March 2021. Island magazine. en-AU.
  16. Book: The Turnrow anthology of contemporary Australian poetry . 2014 . 978-0-9703964-1-9 . Kinsella . John . Monroe, LA . 887100989.
  17. Book: The best Australian poems 2008 . 2008 . Black Inc . 978-1-86395-303-0 . Rose . Peter . Melbourne . 277159164.
  18. Book: The best Australian poems 2009 . 2009 . Black Inc . 978-1-86395-452-5 . Adamson . Robert . Melbourne . 472529846.
  19. Book: The best Australian poems 2010 . 2010 . Black Inc . 978-1-86395-496-9 . Adamson . Robert . Melbourne . 681623372.
  20. Book: The best Australian poems 2011 . 2011 . Black Inc . 978-1-86395-549-2 . Tranter . John . Collingwood, Vic. . 759871511.
  21. Book: The best Australian poems 2012 . 2012 . Black Inc . 978-1-86395-581-2 . Tranter . John . Collingwood, Vic. . 816172127.
  22. Book: Best Australian Poems 2014. . 13 October 2023 . Schwartz Publishing Pty Limited . 978-1-86395-697-0 . Page . Geoff . Collingwood . 890933149.
  23. Book: Best Australian poems 2015 . 2015 . 978-1-86395-779-3 . Page . Geoff . Collingwood, Vic, Australia . 913499999.
  24. Book: Contemporary Australian feminist poetry . 2016 . 978-0-9943528-7-3 . Cassidy . Bonny . St Lucia, Qld. . 954346443 . Wilkinson . Jessica L..
  25. Book: The anthology of Australian prose poetry . 2020 . 978-0-522-87475-4 . Atherton . Cassandra L. . Carleton, Victoria, Australia . 1202463618 . Hetherington . Paul.
  26. May 2016 . Adamson . Robert . Juno Gemes, photographer . Australian Poets . Poetry . en . 2024-06-29 . Poetry Foundation.
  27. Web site: DREAMS AND ARTEFACTS (Lisa Gorton) . 2021-06-25 . www.lyrikline.org.
  28. Web site: Lisa Gorton . 2021-06-25 . Cordite Poetry Review . en-US.
  29. Web site: Lisa Gorton . 2021-06-25 . Sydney Review of Books . en.
  30. Web site: Lisa Gorton . 2021-06-25 . www.australianbookreview.com.au . en-gb.
  31. Web site: Ley . James . Menzies-Pike . Catriona . The Australian Face . 2021-06-25 . Giramondo Publishing . en-AU.
  32. Book: The Little Hotel, book by Christina Stead . 2016-10-03 . 978-1-925355-73-4 . Stead . Christina . Text Publishing Company .
  33. Web site: Gorton . Lisa . Izabela Pluta – Sydney 2019 . 2021-06-25 . The National 4 . en.
  34. Web site: Izabela Pluta – Figures of slippage and oscillation . 2021-06-25 . Perimeter Books . en.
  35. Book: Before and after science : 2010 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art . 2010 . Art Gallery of South Australia . Charlotte Day, Sarah Tutton, Art Gallery of South Australia . 978-1-921668-00-5 . Adelaide, S. Aust. . 495095414.
  36. Web site: Conversations in ellipsis: an exercise in affect & association... time & (e)motion studies, or things unsaid . 2021-06-25 . Artlink Magazine . en.
  37. Book: Melbourne now . 2013 . Max Delany, Fleur Watson, Isobel Crombie, Nikos Papastergiadis, Maggie Finch, Judith Ryan . 978-0-7241-0376-8 . Melbourne . 857900583.
  38. Web site: Lisa Gorton . 2021-06-25 . TEDxSydney . en-AU.
  39. Web site: Lisa Gorton. 2021-06-25. Giramondo Publishing. en-AU.
  40. Web site: Office for the Arts. Department of Infrastructure. 2020-09-09. Empirical. 2021-06-25. www.arts.gov.au. en.
  41. Web site: Lisa Gorton. 2021-06-25. The Wheeler Centre. en.
  42. Web site: Empirical. 2021-06-26. www.newsouthbooks.com.au. en.
  43. Web site: Victorian Premier's Literary Awards: Winners and Shortlist 2008, State Library of Victoria. 3 January 2009. https://web.archive.org/web/20090103002618/https://www.slv.vic.gov.au/programs/literary/pla/recipients/shortlist_winner_08.html. 22 March 2020. 3 January 2009.
  44. Web site: 2014 Premier's Book Awards. State Library of Western Australia. 22 March 2020.
  45. Web site: Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal. Mildura Writers Festival. en. 22 March 2020.
  46. Web site: Winners and shortlist. 2 November 2018. Department of Communications and the Arts. en. 22 March 2020.
  47. Web site: The Life of Houses by Lisa Gorton. www.angusrobertson.com.au. en. 22 March 2020.
  48. Web site: NSW Premier's Literary Awards 2020 shortlists announced. 20 March 2020. Books+Publishing. en-AU. 21 March 2020.
  49. Web site: Australian Centre Literary Awards - Wesley Michel Wright Prize in Poetry . 2023-10-21 . AustLit: Discover Australian Stories . The University of Queensland.
  50. Web site: Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry . 2023-03-01 . State Library of NSW.
  51. Web site: Jessica L. Wilkinson interviews Lisa Gorton. 2021-06-26. Rabbit Poetry. en-US.
  52. Web site: Uncrushed Local Thought Michael Farrel reviews Empirical by Lisa Gorton. 2021-06-26. Sydney Review of Books. en.
  53. Web site: Antoniou. James. 2019-08-02. The place of poetry and the poetry of place. 2021-06-26. The Sydney Morning Herald. en.
  54. Web site: The Life of Houses Lisa Gorton Review . 2021-06-26. Sydney Review of Books. en.
  55. Web site: About Giramondo Giramondo Publishing Company . 2021-06-26 . Giramondo Publishing . en-AU.
  56. Web site: 22 March 2020 . Lisa Gorton . 22 March 2020 . Poetry Foundation . en.

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