AustLit

'In 1961 a woman who would soon be described condescendingly as a Hobart housewife and mother of four punctured one of Australia's most monstrous egos. Her two acrostic sonnets, written under one of the male pseudonyms that she used because of her sense of how poetry by women was undervalued in Australia, was published in the 'Bulletin'. To the petulant rage of its editor, Donald Horne, the pair of poems by 'Walter Lehmann', 'Abelard to Eloise' and 'Eloise to Abelard', had a contemporary satirical point for which the doomed medieval lovers had been enlisted. Read vertically, the initial letters of each line spelled out 'so long Bulletin' 'fuck all editors'. Harwood's first book of poetry, published by Angus and Robertson after unconscionable delays, did not appear until 1964. The Bulletin scandal is what she is perhaps still best remembered for, but her later achievements would lead Clive James at least, and gallantly, to proclaim Harwood as Australia's finest twentieth-century poet.' (Publication abstact)