OUR CLIENTS
Robert Adamson
Poet
Robert Adamson's latest book of poetry The Kingfisher's Soul, was published in the UK by Bloodaxe Books in 2009.
The Golden Bird: New and selected poems, was published in Australia by Black Inc in 2008 and was short listed for both The Age Book of the Year (Poetry) and the Victorian Premier’s Poetry Awards 2009.
’The sparseness and taut energy of the more recent poems, for all Adamson's famous romanticism, seems classic: as if, like Yeats, he has discovered the exhilaration and enterprise of walking naked‘
~ DAVID MALOUF
The Goldfinches of Baghdad, Adamson’s first book published in North America, teems with cockatoos, kookaburras, lyrebirds, dollarbirds, and a host of waders from Australia. At once real presences and sly emissaries of the poetic imagination, these birds perform aspects of ourselves just as we assume their weird attributes: “The shadow your hand casts / resembles the mudlark, opening / its wings, calling and rocking, / perched in the pages / of my book.” They transgress human boundaries, ignoring sign posts and political borders. As birds and words exchange places, Adamson charts their migration. Published by Flood Editions in 2006, Adamson toured the USA in March and April of 2006, reading his poems in public libraries, universities and book stores from San Francisco, Chicago, Athens Georgia to Boston and New York. It was launched in Australia in August 2006 and won the 2006 Grace Leven Prize for Poetry, announced in March 2007. It also won the Age Poetry Book of the Year 2007 and was short listed in the 2007 NSW Premier’s Poetry Awards and the Queensland Premier’s Poetry Awards 2007.
Reading the River – Selected Poems was published in June 2004 in the UK by Bloodaxe books and Robert did a promotional tour in the UK in July of that year.
‘Robert Adamson is one of Australia's national treasures.’
~ John Ashbery
Robert’s poems have been translated into seven languages and won many awards. His 1990 Collection, The Clean Dark, won both the Victorian and NSW Premier’s prizes as well as a National Book Council Banjo Award. He has worked as a poetry editor and consultant for Angus & Robertson and is a director of Paper Bark Press, a publisher of poetry.
Mulberry Leaves, New & Selected Poems 1970 - 2001, published in 2001, brought together the very best of his poetry from 1970 to 2001. This rich but discriminating selection consolidated his claim to being ‘the most unique poet of his generation’ (Dorothy Hewett) – a ‘key figure’ according to the Times Literary Supplement.
Adamson’s career now spans three decades. Mulberry Leaves bears out Dorothy Hewitt’s observation that ‘with each book his maturity and control increases’, ‘He is as deft and resourceful a craftsman as exists. He has savoured his life, felt it at each moment, and written its vivid and enduring testament’ (Robert Creeley) in these ‘brutal and beautiful lyrics’ (Kevin Hart). ‘In the earliest poem printed here, The Rebel Angel, the youthful ex-con’s project is to break out and discover – that is, make for himself – “some kind of law”. These poems are the thirty-year record of that making.’ (David Malouf)
Adamson’s beautifully written autobiography, Inside Out, was first published in hardback in March 2004 by Text Publishing and released in soft cover in July 2006. In this wonderful book, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes funny, Robert tells the story of his childhood and early adulthood in fifties and sixties Australia. Having spent much of his adolescence in boys’ homes and prisons he is introduced to books and dreams of becoming a writer. This book was shortlisted for: AGE BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD, 2004; QLD PREMIER'S AWARDS, BEST NON-FICTION BOOK, 2004; NSW PREMIER'S HISTORY AWARDS, 2004; AUSTRALIAN HISTORY PRIZE STATE LIBRARY OF NSW NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY AWARD, 2005; NSW PREMIER'S LITERARY AWARDS, DOUGLAS STEWART PRIZE, 2005.
Robert is a keen fisherman and has written articles on fishing in a number of magazines, including Fishing World.
Juno Gemes’ photography appears in a number of Robert Adamson's books.
For more information about Robert, and an extensive collection of reviews of his many publications, visit his site at www.robertadamson.com.
GOLVAN ARTS MANAGEMENT • PO Box 766, Kew, Victoria 3101 Australia • golvan@ozemail.com.au