Chris Wallace-Crabbe

Chris Wallace-Crabbe AO (born 6 May 1934) is an Australian poet and Emeritus Professor in The Australian Centre, University of Melbourne.

Biography
Christopher Keith Wallace-Crabbe was born in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond and educated at Scotch College, Yale University, and the University of Melbourne, where for much of his life he has worked, and is now Professor Emeritus in the Australian Centre. He was Visiting Professor of Australian Studies at Harvard University and at the University of Venice, Ca'Foscari. He is also an essayist, a critic of the visual arts, and a notable public reader of his verse.

After leaving school, Wallace-Crabbe set out to be a metallurgist, but was drawn back to his childhood interest in books and art. After training in the RAAF, he worked as an electrical trade journalist while studying for his B.A. in the evenings. He published his first book of poetry while doing his Final Honours year. In 1961 he became Lockie Fellow in Australian Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Melbourne.

Over the next decades he became Reader in English, and then held a Personal Chair from 1988. Thanks to the initiative of H.C. ("Nugget") Coombs, he was a Harkness Fellow at Yale University from 1965-67, mixing widely with American writers and developing his poetry in new directions. In later years he has spent time in Italy, reading and translating Italian verse.

Wallace-Crabbe's early collections were published in Australia, but in 1985 he began to publish with Oxford University Press, reaching an international public. Although he published some of his criticism and his one novel elsewhere, he remained with Oxford until 1998, after which date the Press ceased publishing live poets. He then took his work to Carcanet Publishers, in Manchester. Back in Australia he brought out two books with the Sydney firm of Brandl & Schlesinger. One of these was a highly experimental long poem, or "zany epic", on which he had been working for a dozen years. It would be fair to say that this dense and difficult poem divided the poet's readers.

Reviewers over the years have drawn attention time and again to the energetic mixture of demotic and elevated language which very often marks Wallace-Crabbe's poetry. For the poet this not only testifies to his wide interest in language but also to his sense of the stubborn plurality of our experience. Such mixed diction certainly persists in his very latest books, particularly in his sonnets and in the"Domestic Sublime" sequence of lyrics.

Since his retirement from university teaching he has continued to live in Melbourne, adhering to poetry. He is also Chair of the Australian Poetry Centre.

Awards

 * 1986 - Grace Leven Prize for Poetry
 * 1987 - The Dublin Prize for Arts and Science, awarded through the University of Melbourne
 * 1992 - Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Poettry Award with Kerry Flattley for From the Republic of Conscience 
 * 1995 - winner of "The Age" Book of the Year, and the D.J. O'Hearn Prize for Poetry
 * 2002 - winner of the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal at the Mildura Writer's Festival
 * 2002 - Centenary Medal
 * 2006 - Doctor of Letters honoris causa (Melb.)
 * 2011 - appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO)

Poetry

 * 1959: The Music of Division, Sydney: Angus & Robertson
 * 1962: Eight Metropolitan Poems, Adelaide: Australian Letters; with John Brack
 * 1963: In Light and Darkness, Sydney: Angus & Robertson
 * 1967: The Rebel General, Sydney: Angus & Robertson
 * 1971: Where the Wind Came, Sydney: Angus and Robertson
 * 1973: Selected Poems, Sydney: Angus & Robertson
 * 1976: The Foundations of Joy, (Poets of the Month Series), Sydney: Angus & Robertson
 * 1979: The Emotions Are Not Skilled Workers, Sydney: Angus & Robertson
 * 1985: The Amorous Cannibal, Oxford: Oxford University Press
 * 1988: I'm Deadly Serious, Oxford: Oxford University Press
 * 1989: Sangue e l'acqua, translated and edited by Giovann Distefano, Abano Terme: Piovan Editore
 * 1990: For Crying Out Loud, Oxford: Oxford University Press
 * 1993: Rungs of Time, Oxford: Oxford University Press
 * 1995: Selected Poems 1956-1994, Oxford: Oxford University Press
 * 1998: Whirling, Oxford: Oxford University Press
 * 2001: By and Large, Manchester: Carcanet; and Sydney; Brandl and Schlesinger
 * 2003: A Representative Human, Brunswick: Gungurru Press
 * 2004: Next
 * 2005: The Universe Looks Down, Brandl & Schlesinger, ISBN 1-876040-74-2
 * 2006: Then
 * 2008: "Telling a Hawk from a Handsaw", Manchester Carcanet Oxford Poets

Recorded poetry

 * 1973: ''Vinyl record: Chris Wallace-Crabbe Reads From His Own Verse, St.Lucia
 * 2000: ''The Poems; Brunswick: Gungurru
 * 2009: "The Domestic Sublime", Sydney: River Road Press

Fiction

 * 1981: Splinters, Adelaide

Literary criticism

 * 1974: Melbourne or the Bush: Essays on Australian Literature and Society, Sydney: Angus & Robertson
 * 1979: Toil and Spin: Two Directions in Modern Poetry, Melbourne: Hutchinson
 * 1983: Three Absences in Australian Writing, Townsville: Foundation for Australian Literary Studies
 * 1990: Poetry and Belief, Hobart: University of Tasmania, 1990
 * 1990: Falling into Language, Melbourne: Oxford University Press
 * 2005: "Read It Again", Cambridge:  Salt

Edited

 * 1963: Six Voices: Contemporary Australian Poets, Sydney: Angus & Robertson; American Edition, Westport, 1979
 * 1971: Australian Poetry 1971, Sydney: Angus & Robertson
 * 1980: The Golden Apples of the Sun: Twentieth Century Australian Poetry, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
 * 1981: The Australian Nationalists: Modern Critical Essays, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, (with Peter Pierce),
 * 1984: Clubbing of the Gunfire: 101 Australian War Poems, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1984 (with D. Goodman and D.J. Hearn)
 * 1911: Multicultural Australia: the Challenges of Change, Newham (with Kerry Flattley),
 * 1992: From the Republic of Conscience, Melbourne: Aird Books in association with Amnesty International; and New York: White Pine Press, 1992 (with Kerry Flattley and Sigurdur A. Magnusson), ISBN 0947214216
 * 1994: Ur Riki Samviskunnar, Reykjavik: Amnesty International
 * 1998: Author, Author! Tales of Australian Literary Life, Melbourne: O.U.P., 1998 (with Harold Bolitho)
 * 1998: Associate Editor (with Bruce Bennett and Jennifer Strauss): The Oxford Literary History of Australia, Melbourne: Oxford University Press
 * 1998: Approaching Australia: Papers from the Harvard Australian Studies Symposium, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Committee on Australian Studies
 * 2002: La Poésie Australienne, Valenciennes: Presses Universitaires, (with Simone Kadi)
 * 2004: "Imagining Australia:  Literature and Culture in the New New World",  Cambridge Mass:  Harvard University Committee on Australian Studies.  With Judith Ryan

Artist's Books with the artist Bruno Leti

 * 1994: "Drawing", Melbourne:  Australian Print Workshop
 * 1995: "Apprehensions", Melbourne:  the artist
 * 1996: "New Year", Melbourne and Canberra:  the artist
 * 1996: "The Iron Age", Melbourne:  the artist
 * 1999: "Timber", New York:  the artist and Raphael Fodde;  with Inge and Grahame King
 * 2001: "The Alignments Two", Melbourne:  the artist
 * 2002: "Colours", Melbourne:  the artist
 * 2004: "The Alignments One", Melbourne:  the artist

Other Artists' Books

 * 2006: "All Writing Still is to be Done", Vicenza:  L'Officina;  with Marco Fazzini and Gianluca Murasecchi
 * 2005: "The Flowery Meadow" (after Dante), Melbourne:  Electio Editions;  with Alan Loney and Bruno Leti
 * 2007: "Skin, Surfaces and Shadows", Warrandyte:  with Tommaso Durante