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'Barry Hill's tenth book of poetry selects from his Naked Clay: Drawing from Lucian Freud, which was shortlisted for the Forward Prize, 2013, and described by John Kinsella as a 'masterpiece'; Grass Hut Work (2016), his excursion into Hiroshima and Japanese poetry, which Sam Hamill said was 'beautiful and quietly powerful'; Lines for Birds (2011) his collaboration with the painter John Wolseley, was acclaimed by Nathaniel Tarn as 'a miraculous gift of a book'; The Inland Sea (2001), which David Malouf described as 'a mixture of intense contemplation and powerful eroticism'; Ghosting William Buckley (1993), deemed by Barrett Reid a 'major work' of 'stories, thought and music' from the encounter of a 'wild white man' and the indigenous people of the Australian frontier. This Selected also includes recent poetry--lyrical, political and in memoriam.' (Publication summary)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Under the Influence
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 1 August 2020; (p. 15)
— Review of Eagerly We Burn 2019 selected work poetry'Across a long career that includes 10 books of poems, short story and nonfiction collections, essays and librettos, Barry Hill has maintained a quiet, persistently influential place in Australian literature. His books have won numerous awards in this country and his eighth book, Naked Clay: Drawing From Lucian Freud, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize in Britain.' (Introduction)
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Eagerly We Burn: Selected Poems 1980–2018 by Barry Hill
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , April no. 420 2020;
— Review of Eagerly We Burn 2019 selected work poetry'There is probably no book in a poet’s career more important than his or her first Selected Poems. It is here that poets have the opportunity to display the best of their work in all its variety over several decades. Individual collections are a mere step on the way. Collecteds tend to be posthumous and of interest mainly to scholars, reference libraries, and a cluster of devotees.' (Introduction)
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Barry Hill: Eagerly We Burn : Selected Poems 1980 – 2018
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Poetry Review , no. 14 2019;
— Review of Eagerly We Burn 2019 selected work poetry
'At fewer than two hundred pages, Eagerly We Burn – the title is taken from one of the poems in a collaborative book with the artist, John Wolseley, devoted to birds – is a restrained and tight selected given the size of Barry Hill’s poetic output. The poems are organised by book but retrospectively (ie beginning with new work and ending with Hill’s first book, Raft) and there’s quite a bit of revision, especially of the earlier work, though it’s not rewriting, more a matter of adjusting and polishing. Raft was published when its author was forty-seven and the earliest poems in it were written when he was forty. That’s a late start for a poet but it does provide some clues that might help frame a description of what Hill has done and is doing. One gets a strong sense that the poems arise from what one is tempted to call “projects” though this can convey an inaccurate impression of a preconceived and planned intellectual quest. Hill’s projects might better be described as long term engagements with certain cultural, spiritual, intellectual, emotional and artistic experiences. Not necessarily an unusual source of poems but seldom done so exhaustively. Engagements like that are part of the powerful drive to extend the borders of the self, to, in Auden’s words, “twig from what we are not what we might be next”, and they tend to begin in maturity.' (Introduction)
-
Barry Hill: Eagerly We Burn : Selected Poems 1980 – 2018
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Poetry Review , no. 14 2019;
— Review of Eagerly We Burn 2019 selected work poetry
'At fewer than two hundred pages, Eagerly We Burn – the title is taken from one of the poems in a collaborative book with the artist, John Wolseley, devoted to birds – is a restrained and tight selected given the size of Barry Hill’s poetic output. The poems are organised by book but retrospectively (ie beginning with new work and ending with Hill’s first book, Raft) and there’s quite a bit of revision, especially of the earlier work, though it’s not rewriting, more a matter of adjusting and polishing. Raft was published when its author was forty-seven and the earliest poems in it were written when he was forty. That’s a late start for a poet but it does provide some clues that might help frame a description of what Hill has done and is doing. One gets a strong sense that the poems arise from what one is tempted to call “projects” though this can convey an inaccurate impression of a preconceived and planned intellectual quest. Hill’s projects might better be described as long term engagements with certain cultural, spiritual, intellectual, emotional and artistic experiences. Not necessarily an unusual source of poems but seldom done so exhaustively. Engagements like that are part of the powerful drive to extend the borders of the self, to, in Auden’s words, “twig from what we are not what we might be next”, and they tend to begin in maturity.' (Introduction) -
Eagerly We Burn: Selected Poems 1980–2018 by Barry Hill
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , April no. 420 2020;
— Review of Eagerly We Burn 2019 selected work poetry'There is probably no book in a poet’s career more important than his or her first Selected Poems. It is here that poets have the opportunity to display the best of their work in all its variety over several decades. Individual collections are a mere step on the way. Collecteds tend to be posthumous and of interest mainly to scholars, reference libraries, and a cluster of devotees.' (Introduction)
-
Under the Influence
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 1 August 2020; (p. 15)
— Review of Eagerly We Burn 2019 selected work poetry'Across a long career that includes 10 books of poems, short story and nonfiction collections, essays and librettos, Barry Hill has maintained a quiet, persistently influential place in Australian literature. His books have won numerous awards in this country and his eighth book, Naked Clay: Drawing From Lucian Freud, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize in Britain.' (Introduction)
