Anthony Lawrence – May 23 2021

International Missing Children’s Day – May 25

Anthony is an award-winning poet and novelist. He left school at 16, worked as a jackeroo, travelled for several years before returning to become a teacher and writer. It was while working as a fisherman in Western Australia that Anthony secured the literary fellowship which enabled him to devote time to writing poetry. His subsequent awards include the 2003 Claudio Alcorso Award, a residency enabling research and writing in Italy, and a Senior Fellowship from the Australia Council, one of the most prestigious funding awards a writer can be accorded in Australia. Anthony’s poems have appeared in numerous Australian and international literary magazines including Meanjin, Overland, Salt and Antipodes (USA). His work has been translated into German, Italian, Spanish, Slovenian, Ukrainian and Japanese. Anthony has published one novel, In the Half Light, and 16 volumes of poetry, including his most recent collection, Headwaters, which was awarded the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry in 2017. The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature describes his poetry as “narrative with a strong lyrical vein”, and the Austlit database entry describes his poetry as exploring “many aspects of Australian landscape, capturing the harshness of rural life, but also meditating on the minute and beautiful details of native birds, fish and animals. His verse also examines the poet’s childhood and early influences, and reveals a fascination with figurative language and the process of creating a poem.” Anthony currently teaches creative writing at Griffith University.

The Welfare of My Enemy [Verse novella]
Puncher and Wattmann, 2011; ISBN 9781921450495
Too much information can be hard to swallow. Time will often tell when leads are hard to follow. Evidence blows away when the earth is fallow. Some seeds take. Some graves are shallow. Blending verse novella and book-length poem, The Welfare of My Enemy is a ground-breaking, haunted portrait of the phenomenon of Missing Persons. At times disturbing, always captivating, this new book showcases Lawrence’s marvellous imagery and spellbinding rhythms in a work that highlights a dark, prevailing underside to Australian society.

Signal Flare
Puncher and Wattman, 2013; ISBN 9781922186355
With Signal Flare, Anthony Lawrence continues and extends the lyrical work that began with The Sleep of a Learning Man and which found sustained resonance in Bark. Six years in the making, Signal Flare showcases many of Lawrence’s hallmark stylistic flourishes: arresting inner music, dramatic clarity, and imagery that is often ‘cinematically tactile’ (the Poetry Archive). These poems highlight a number of abiding themes and concerns: human relationships; connections between the natural world and human involvement or intervention; clear, surreal evocations of place and character, and unusual, often indelible, depictions of weather and landscape.