Kate Llewellyn – July 19 2020

Kate is an award-winning poet, though probably best known for her prose. She worked as a nurse prior to taking up writing while studying for her Bachelor of Arts degree. Kate opened Llewellyn Galleries in Adelaide, helped found the Adelaide-based Friendly Street poetry society and was a national secretary of the Poets Union. With Susan Hampton, she edited the Penguin Book of Australian Women Poets which sought to redress the omission of women from other Australian poetry anthologies of the 1970s and 1980s. A selection of Kate’s own poems appears in anthologies such as Sisters Poets, 1, Australian Verse: An Oxford Anthology and The New Oxford Book of Australian Verse. Her other poetry collections include Trader Kate and the Elephants, Luxury, Honey: poems, Figs: poems, Selected Poems, Crosshatched and Poets & Perspectives: Kate Llewellyn. Three of Kate’s short stories were published in Frictions, an Anthology of Fiction by Women, edited by Anna Gibbs and Alison Tilson, and Ruth Bacchus and Barbara Hill have edited First Things First: Selected Letters of Kate Llewellyn 1977-2004. After moving to Leura in the Blue Mountains, Kate wrote a trilogy of autobiographical novels commonly referred to as the ‘Blue Mountains trilogy’. Her other prose includes The Dressmaker’s Daughter, an autobiographical account of her early life, and Playing with Water, a gardening memoir which includes poems alongside recipes, letters and diary entries.

Harbour: Poems 2000–2019
Wakefield Press, 2020; ISBN 9781743057025
Art is always like this. Mysterious as light. Quiet and insightful, raw in its simplicity, this collection of poems from iconic Australian poet Kate Llewellyn, written between the years of 2000 to 2019, examines a life well lived, dipping in and out of memory to tell a tale of small moments and the wisdom of growing old. In the poem ‘Harbour’ she touches on what is lost and gained in growing up, ‘The Big Nothing’ draws readers along on a journey to view the world through another’s eyes, and ‘What They Said’ brings forth a cacophony of voices, opinions and dreams across a lifetime. Moving, profound and often joyful, this collection is a must-have for all Kate Llewellyn fans.

Sofala: And Other Poems
Hudson Publishing, 1999; ISBN 9780949873774
This is poetry that nourishes and sustains. Kate Llewellyn looks at the world with reverence, joy and gratitude. These are poems which can increase those illuminations – the moments when life seems to pause and we grasp some new understanding of the great richness and abundance of it all. With patience, wisdom and respect, this poet looks at the world with shocking originality. The poems here are full of delight, amusement and awe at the sheer dazzling wonder of nature and of life itself.
“This book brings us Kate Llewellyn at her mature best. With astounding originality she again delights with this lyrical collection of poems. Insightful and observant, she distills the poetic essence of everyday life inviting us to see the world around us in all its uniqueness.” – Jerry Rogers