Revenge on red-faced , male chauvinist editors.
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The above slim volume about the work of one of Australia's finest poets, Gwen Harwood AO (1920-1995), was discovered in the book section at the back of the always interesting emporium trading as Island Living, 4 Mandalay Avenue , Nelly Bay, Magnetic Island.
It is the place with the artistic metal fence that reflects the local flora, fauna and sealife in its design ,surely an inspiration for any budding poet .
And there are wonderful Bush-stone Curlews on the island , which also featured in Harwood's life and inspired her to write about them .
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Early in her career as a would be poet, Harwood found most of her poems submitted under her own name were rejected . The founder and editor of the Meanjin literary magazine , Clem B. Christensen , born Townsville in 1911, rejected one of her 1961 poems, but used an expression she used in it as the title for one of his .
In a bid to be published , she developed a number of pen names, one being W.W.Hagendoor , an anagram of her real name .
The Bulletin accepted a sonnet from her under one of her male pseudonyms , Walter Lehmann . After it was published it was pointed out to the editor , Donald Horne , he who developed the catchy nickname The Lucky Country for Australia , that the first letter in each line formed the message : FUCK ALL EDITORS .
You would not expect this kind of language from a bright student educated at the Brisbane Girls' Grammar School , also a church organist .
Another surprise for Donald was the time an angry reporter poured a glass of beer over his head in a Sydney pub , covered in Little Darwin .
A music teacher, Harwood became a noted librettist ,went to Tasmania with her husband, a linguist , became a lecturer at the University of Tasmania, had a lifelong interest in the philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, won numerous awards.
A previous owner of this 1991 Sydney University Press published book highlighted in yellow opening paragraphs in a chapter headed LIFE SENTENCES ON THE LITTORAL as follows .
Beguiling us with music and light, Harwood's poems take us close to edges. The poems are concerned always with the sharpness of life and death, either or both : they literally spell out 'life sentences', sentences to life, death ,and the keenness of both .The many 'water's edge' poems are mostly concerned with the rhythmically changing beauty of the earth and our belonging to it.
