Lisa Gorton | |
---|---|
Born | 1972 |
Occupation | Poet and novelist |
Language | English |
Nationality | Australian |
Years active | 1993- |
Notable works | The Life of Houses |
Notable awards | 2016 Prime Minister's Literary Awards – Fiction |
Lisa Gorton (born 1972) is an Australian poet, novelist, literary editor and essayist.[1] She is the author of three award-winning poetry collections: Press Release,[2] Hotel Hyperion,[3] and Empirical.[4] Her novel The Life of Houses, received the NSW Premier's People's Choice Award for Fiction,[5] and the Prime Minister's Award for Fiction (shared).[6] Gorton is also the editor of Black Inc's anthology Best Australian Poems 2013.[7]
Gorton was educated at the University of Melbourne and at Oxford University.[8] At Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar, Gorton completed an MPhil in Renaissance Literature and a DPhil on John Donne.[8] She received the John Donne Society Award for Outstanding Publication in Donne Studies.[9]
In 1994 she was awarded the inaugural Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize.[10]
Having previously worked as poetry editor for the literary journal, Gorton was the Australian Book Review's Poet of the Month in October 2019.[11][12] Gorton has contributed essays to the Australian Book Review[11] and the Sydney Review of Books.[13] As of 2021, she is poetry editor of Island.[14]
She is the granddaughter of the former Prime Minister John Gorton.[10]
Gorton's poetry has been widely anthologised, including in The Turnrow Anthology of Contemporary Australian Poetry,[15] edited by John Kinsella, the Best Australian Poems series (2008,[16] 2009,[17] 2010,[18] 2011,[19] 2012,[20] 2014,[21] 2015[22]), Contemporary Australian Feminist Poetry, edited by Bonny Cassidy and Jessica Wilkinson,[23] the Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry, edited by Cassandra Atherton and Paul Hetherington,[24] the Poetry Magazine May 2016 selection of Australian poetry, edited by Bob Adamson with photos by Juno Gemes,[25] and online anthologies Poetry International [8] and lyrikline.[26] Her poetry can also be found online at Cordite magazine.[27]
Gorton's essays have been published in the Sydney Review of Books [28] and Australian Book Review,[29] and in the essay collection Australian Face, edited by James Ley and Catriona Menzies-Pike.[30] Gorton wrote the introductory essay for the Text Classics reissue of Christina Stead's novel The Little Hotel.[31] She also wrote the catalogue essay for Izabela Pluta's artwork Apparent Distance in the 2019 exhibition The National at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.[32]
Gorton is interested in ekphrastic poetry. She has composed a series of poems for Izabela Pluta's artist's book Figures of Slippage and Oscillation.[33] She has also written ekphrastic poems for the catalogue of the 2010 Adelaide Biennial of Contemporary Art Before and After Science,[34] for the exhibition Conversations in Ellipsis,[35] and for the Melbourne Now limited edition volume from the National Gallery of Victoria.[36]
Gorton gave a poetry reading at TEDx Sydney in 2010.[37]
Gorton's awards for poetry include the Victorian Premier's Prize for Poetry,[29] the Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize,[9] and the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal.[38] Her novel The Life of Houses was awarded the New South Wales Premier's People's Choice Award, and the Prime Minister's Fiction Prize.[5]
Her poetry books have also been shortlisted in the Prime Minister's Prize for Poetry,[39] the Mary Gilmore Poetry Prize,[40] the Melbourne Prize for Literature Best Writing Award,[41] and the NSW Premier's Poetry Award.[42]
On Empirical
Jessica Wilkinson, poet and editor of Rabbit magazine, interviewed Gorton about her poetry collection Empirical, noting Lisa's interest in ‘how a feeling for place originates'.[51] In The Sydney Review of Books, poet and critic Michael Farrell suggests that Gorton's poetry collection Empirical offers ‘models of 3D thought', remarking that ‘Gorton reanimates - and translates - historical textual materials into contemporary poetry', and that her work ‘performs as an antidote to nationalist ideology'.[52] In The Sydney Morning Herald, James Antoniou writes: ‘an important voice is breaking through here: assured, polyphonic and, for all its quietness, visionary'.[53]
On The Life of Houses
In the Sydney Review of Books, Kerryn Goldsworthy writes about Gorton's debut novel The Life of Houses:[54] ‘One of the main reasons for Gorton's status as a highly respected, prize-winning Australian poet is her unique and personal angle of vision on the world. It's something that, as Auden surmises, cannot be taught…For Gorton it seems not so much a matter of finding le mot juste as of making something entirely new: not merely choosing the word or naming the non-verbal thing it represents, but of using metaphor to create a new and separate third entity in which a word or phrase brings an inchoate, intangible feeling, sensation or memory out of the shadows and into the sunlight of consciousness'.
Individual poems have been published in Heat magazine,[55] Poetry magazine,[56] The Best Australian Poems 2008,[57] The Best Australian Poems 2009,[58] The Best Australian Poems 2010,[59] The Best Australian Poems 2012.[60]