AustLit

'In August 1961, Gwen Harwood smuggled two acrostic sonnets into the Bulletin under the name Walter Lehmann. The first, 'Eloisa to Abelard', spelled out 'So Long Bulletin,' and the second, 'Aberlard to Eloisa',  'Fuck all Editors.'  The presence of the acrostics, and the identity of their author was soon discovered, and for a few days, the hoax was front-page news. In Brisbane, Truth announced the 'Great Poem Hoax : Experts Fooled by Naughty Sonnets' while in Hobart the same newspaper proclaimed : 'Tas Housewife in Hoax of Year.' Meanwhile an outraged Bulletin expressed its disdain for Harwood's 'sad jest,' remarking snippily that 'a genuine literary hoax would have had some point to it' (3). For Harwood herself, things were 'rather nasty really' for a few weeks (Idle Talk 49), but soon enough, the so-caled Bulletin hoax faded quietly from public view. since then it has sometimes been referenced as an amusing snippet of Australian literary history - usually in relation to the Ern Malley affair.But unlike that earlier hoax, which Ken Ruthven has dubbed Australia's primal scene of literary forgery' (31). Harwood's hoax has rarely been seen as having any real literary or cultural significance.' (Introduction)