The Wandering Islands
Author | A. D. Hope |
---|---|
Language | English |
Genre | poetry |
Publisher | Edwards and Shaw, Sydney |
Publication date | 1955 |
Publication place | Australia |
Media type | |
Pages | 73pp |
Followed by | Poems |
The Wandering Islands (1955) is the first poetry collection by Australian poet A. D. Hope. It won the Grace Leven Prize for Poetry in 1955.[1]
The collection consists of 39 poems, most are published in this collection for the first time and others are reprinted from various Australian poetry publications. The earliest poem in the collection dates from 1943.[1]
Contents
- "Flower Poem"
- "Easter Hymn"
- "Observation Car"
- "The Wandering Islands"
- "Three Romances"
- "Rawhead and Bloody Bones"
- "X-Ray Photograph"
- "Massacre of the Innocents"
- "Pygmalion"
- "Ascent into Hell"
- "The Gateway"
- "The Muse"
- "The Pleasure of Princes"
- "Imperial Adam"
- "The Trophy"
- "Pyramis or The House of Ascent"
- "Circe : After the Painting by Dosso Dossi"
- "The Death of the Bird"
- "Invocation"
- "William Butler Yeats"
- "Chorale"
- "The Cheek"
- "The Sleeper"
- "Lot and His Daughters" Note: Printed as two separate poems: "Lot and His Daughters" I and II.
- "The Dinner"
- "The Return of Persephone"
- "The Lamp and the Jar"
- "Heldensagen"
- "The Brides"
- "Toast for a Golden Age"
- "Sportsfield"
- "Standardisation"
- "Giving It Up"
- "The House of God"
- "The Lingam and the Yoni"
- "To Julia Walking Away"
- "The Explorers"
- "Conquistador"
- "The Bed"
Notes
"He was talked into publishing his first book in 1956 when two young printers who had inherited a printing press wrote and told him of some fine paper they had acquired. They would print a book if he would provide the manuscript. He did and The Wandering Islands was born."[2]
Critical reception
In a retrospective of A. D. Hope's work originally published in The Times Literary Supplement, Clive James wrote: "The first collection of poems by A.D. Hope, The Wandering Islands, belatedly appeared in 1955, and consolidated the position he had already established as the leading Australian poet of his time. The book had to appear belatedly (Hope was already 48) because if it had appeared much earlier its author might have been prosecuted. Australia was still a censored country and several of Hope's poems dared to mention the particularities of sexual intercourse. Without his air of authority, Hope might never have got his book into the shops before old age supervened. But an air of authority was what he had. He spoke from on high. His vocabulary was of the present, but it had the past in it, transparent a long way down. And it was all sent forward like a wave by his magisterial sense of rhythm."[3]
Awards
- 1955 - winner Grace Leven Prize for Poetry
See also
- 1955 in Australian literature
- 1955 in poetry
References
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- t
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- Pacific Sea by Nan McDonald (1947)
- A Drum for Ben Boyd by Francis Webb (1948)
- Woman to Man by Judith Wright (1949)
- No award (1950)
- The Great South Land : An Epic Poem by Rex Ingamells (1951)
- Between Two Tides by R. D. Fitzgerald (1952)
- Tumult of the Swans by Roland Robinson (1953)
- Thirty Poems by John Thompson (1954)
- The Wandering Islands by A. D. Hope (1955)
- No award (1956)
- Elegiac and Other Poems by Leonard Mann (1957)
- Antipodes in Shoes by Geoffrey Dutton (1958)
- The Wind at Your Door by R. D. Fitzgerald (1959)
- Man in a Landscape by Colin Thiele (1960)
- Time on Fire by Thomas Shapcott (1961)
- Southmost Twelve by R. D. Fitzgerald (1962)
- The North-Bound Rider by Ian Mudie (1963)
- All the Room by David Rowbotham (1964)
- The Ilex Tree by Les Murray and Geoffrey Lehmann (1965)
- The Talking Clothes: Poems by William Hart-Smith (1966)
- Collected Poems 1936-1967 by Douglas Stewart (1967)
- Selected Poems 1942-1968 by David Campbell (1968)
- A Counterfeit Silence: Selected Poems by Randolph Stow (1969)
- Letters to Live Poets by Bruce Beaver (1970)
- Judith Wright: Collected Poems, 1942-1970 by Judith Wright (1971)
- Collected Poems 1936-1970 by James McAuley (1971)
- Head-waters by Peter Skrzynecki (1972)
- A Soapbox Omnibus by Rodney Hall (1973)
- Neighbours in a Thicket: Poems by David Malouf (1974)
- Selected Poems (1975) by Gwen Harwood (1975)
- Selected Poems 1939–1975 by John Blight (1976)
- Selected Poems by Robert Adamson (1977)
- Sometimes Gladness : Collected Poems 1954-1978 by Bruce Dawe (1978)
- The Man in the Honeysuckle by David Campbell (1979)
- The Boys Who Stole the Funeral by Les Murray (1980)
- Nero's Poems: Translations of the Public and Private Poems of the Emperor Nero by Geoffrey Lehmann (1981)
- Tide Country by Vivian Smith (1982)
- Collected Poems by Peter Porter (1983)
- The Three Fates and Other Poems by Rosemary Dobson (1984)
- Selected Poems 1963-1983 by Robert Gray (1985)
- The Amorous Cannibal by Chris Wallace-Crabbe (1985)
- Washing the Money : Poems with Photographs by Rhyll McMaster (1986)
- Occasions of Birds and Other Poems by Elizabeth Riddell (1987)
- Under Berlin by John Tranter (1988)
- A Tremendous World in Her Head by Dorothy Hewett (1989)
- No award (1990)
- Dog Fox Field by Les Murray (1991)
- Empire of Grass by Gary Catalano (1992)
- Peniel by Kevin Hart (1992)
- The End of the Season by Philip Hodgins (1993)
- No award (1994)
- New and Selected Poems by Kevin Hart (1995)
- Flying the Coop : New and Selected Poems 1972-1994 by Rhyll McMaster (1995)
- Path of Ghosts: poems 1986-93 by Jemal Sharah (1995)
- No award (1996)
- The Undertow: New and Selected Poems by John Kinsella (1997)
- No award (1998)
- No award (1999)
- No award (2000)
- Darker and Lighter by Geoff Page (2001)
- Versary by Kate Lilley (2002)
- Lost in the Foreground by Stephen Edgar (2003)
- Totem by Luke Davies (2004)
- Next to Nothing by Noel Rowe (2005)
- The Past Completes Me: Selected Poems 1973-2003 by Alan Gould (2006)
- The Goldfinches of Baghdad by Robert Adamson (2007)
- The Australian Popular Songbook by Alan Wearne (2008)
- No award (2009)
- Phantom Limb by David Musgrave (2010)
- No award (2011)
- Another Fine Morning in Paradise by Michael Sharkey (2012)