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Geoff Page

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Geoff Page

Geoff Page. Photo by John Knight for Pitt Street Poets. Licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Geoffrey Donald Page (born 7 July 1940) is an Australian poet, translator, teacher, and jazz enthusiast.

Life[]

Page has published over 17 collections of poetry, as well as prose and verse novels. Poetry and jazz are his driving interests, and he has also written a biography of the jazz musician, Bernie McGann. He organises poetry readings and jazz events in Canberra.

Page has held residencies at numerous academic, military and political institutions, including Edith Cowan University, Curtin University, the Australian Defence Force Academy, and the University of Wollongong and as the Chair of the Australian Socialist Alliance(Citation needed). From 1974 to 2001 Page was head of the English department at Narrabundah College, a secondary college in the A.C.T.. He retired from teaching in 2001.

He has travelled widely, talking on Australian poetry in Switzerland, Britain, Italy, Singapore, China, the United States and New Zealand. His poetic style ranges from lyrical to satirical, from serious to humorous - and often addresses his concerns about contemporary society and politics. Judith Beveridge writes that 'Page is a humanely satirical poet. He lets us view our condition with a fusion of the comic and the tragic.[1]

Page is the poetry reviewer for ABC Radio's The Book Show and, for a decade before that, its Books and Writing program.[2]

Page curates the Poetry at the Gods and Jazz at the Gods series at the Gods Cafe in Canberra. [3]

Writing[]

Australian poet, John Tranter, in his 1983 review of The Younger Australian Poets (edited by Robert Gray and Geoffrey Lehmann) wrote of Page:

He is not a self-promoter, and his modest output has been inadequately represented in recent anthologies, as the editors of this one quite properly point out. His poetry has been influenced loosely by the American William Carlos Williams. In general, the spare precision of Williams' short lines is a good preventive against galloping garrulity, and in Page's hands it delivers a dry and particularly Australian accent and a thoughtful movement from phrase to phrase. The short line, as a model, can be overdone: 'of 3 a.m.' is an example that does little for me. Page's technique is low-key — his French and American influences are invisible in the texture of his localised speech — yet it enables him to range widely among language and experience.[4]

Recognition[]

  • Queensland Premier's Literary Awards for Poetry
  • 2001: Patrick White Award
  • 2001: Grace Leven Prize for Poetry, for Darker and Lighter
  • 2004: ACT Writing and Publishing Awards for poetry for The Indigo Book of Modern Australian Sonnets (editor)
  • 2006: Christopher Brennan Award

Publications[]

Poetry[]

Novels[]

  • Benton's Conviction. North Ryde, NSW: Angus & Robertson, 1985.
  • Winter Vision. St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 1989.

Non-fiction[]

  • On the Move: Australian poets in England. Springwood, NSW: Butterfly Books, 1992.
  • A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Australian Poetry. St. Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 1995.
  • Bernie McGann: A life in jazz. Armidale, NSW: Kardoorair Press, 1997.
  • Canberra Then and Now: A memoir. Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2013.

Translated[]

Edited[]

  • The Indigo Book of Modern Australian Sonnets. Charnwood: Ginninderra Press, 2003.
  • 60 Classic Australian Poems. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2009.
  • 80 Great Poems from Chaucer to Now. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2006.
  • Shadows from Wire: Poems and photographs of Australians in the Great War. Ringwood, Vic: Penguin, 1983.

Journal[]

  • Smiling in English, Smoking in French: A journal. Deakin, ACT: Brindabella Press, 1987.


Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.[6]

See also[]

References[]

  1. ↑ Back Page Blurb, Agnostic skies, Melbourne, Five Islands Press, 2006
  2. ↑ Geoff Page's Seriatum
  3. ↑ The Gods Cafe Special Events Accessed 30 December 2011
  4. ↑ John Tranter: Reviewer
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Geoff Page (1940- ), Australian Poetry Library, Web, Mar. 17, 2012.
  6. ↑ Search results = au:Geoff Page, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Feb. 17, 2014.

External links[]

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