AustLit

Gwen Harwood's most direct account of the development of her writing ambitions appears in Blessed City, a selection of letters she wrote in wartime Brisbane when she was in her early twenties to Tony Riddell, a new friend on active service in the navy. At the time, she was not a poet — far from it. She was working in the War Damage Commission, a public service institution set up to provide insurance against possible damage resulting from World War H. She found the organisation ludicrous in every aspect, from its aims to its processes to its earnest employees, and in a spirit half of mischief, half of outrage, she began a one-person campaign of mocking, corrupting and destabilising it. Her behaviour was extraordinary. She developed an impenetrable filing system, explicable to no one but herself. She inserted made-up people into the official records. She dedicated long hours at her desk to cutting out cardboard animals and writing private letters. She even staged elaborate phone conversations in German with imaginary interlocutors. Many yeas later she would tell a friend that she could not imagine how she was not fired, or at least moved on.  (Introduction)