Dr John Hawke
PhD (University of Sydney), BA (University of Sydney)
John Hawke curriculum vitae [
127 kb]
Biography
I received my PhD in English from the University of Sydney, where my thesis was awarded the Dame Leonie Kramer Prize in 1999. From 1997-2006 I taught literary theory within the Faculty of Creative Arts, University of Wollongong; I am currently a Senior Lecturer, specializing in poetry, in the Department of English at Monash. My poetry has been widely published, and has received a number of grants and prizes, including the 1994 Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship. I have been involved in editing literary publications since 1981, and in recent years was an Assistant Editor for Heat magazine and a contributing editor to Southerly and Boxkite. As coordinator and judge of the Newcastle Poetry Prize I edited two anthologies of Australian poetry, The New World Tattoo (1996) and The Nightjar (1997). My critical study, Australian Literature and the Symbolist Movement, is published by University of Wollongong Press; a selection of poetry, The Illustrated Library, will appear with Salt Press (Cambridge) in 2010. I co-convened the Poetry and the Trace international conference held at the State Library of Victoria in July 2008.
Research interests
Modernism and Australian Poetry
My research has taken a comparative approach to the historical relationship between French Symbolist and Modernist poetics and its influence on contemporary poetry. Australian Literature and the Symbolist Movement surveys the local reception of international Modernism through poets such as Christopher Brennan, Kenneth Slessor and Judith Wright, as well as critics such as A.R.Chisholm and James McAuley. It argues that the influence of the French Symbolist aesthetic is comparable in our literature to that of the dominant nationalist movement, and that the local response to these ideas was in advance of other areas of the English-speaking world.
Ethnographic Sources of Modernism
My current research examines the significance to Anglo-American Modernist writers of the ethnographic writings of Spencer and Gillen. This has led me to undertake archival research on the papers of T.S.Eliot, J.G.Frazer, Jane Harrison and other associates of the ‘Cambridge Ritual’ school, establishing lines of influence between Australian sources and theories of culture advanced by leading figures such as Eliot, D.H.Lawrence and HD.
Modern and Contemporary Literature and Poetics
My teaching and supervision have focused particularly on poets and novelists of the Realist, Naturalist and Symbolist periods; Anglo-American Modernists such as Stein, Pound and Joyce; Modernist avant-gardes, especially Russian Futurism, Surrealism and Negritude; and Formalist and Structuralist approaches to signification in relation to ‘postmodern’ literature. I have a strong interest and involvement in contemporary Australian and US poetry.
Supervision
I have supervised doctoral work on the following topics: Louis Zukofsky; Outsider Writings: Artists’ Books of Anthony Mannix; Correspondence of Charles Olson; Lyric Subject in Poetry of John Tranter; Angela Carter and the Historical Novel; Latin American Modernist Avant-Gardes; Simone Weil and Fanny Howe; The Magical Child in the NZ Novel; Poetry and Mysticism: Kabir, Rumi, Basho; Hypertext and Eco-poetics. I have also supervised in the areas of Modernist and contemporary poetry (Khlebnikov, Artaud, Bonnefoy), Australian poetry (Francis Webb, Gwen Harwood, Les Murray, PiO, J.S.Harry, Judith Wright), and intersections between critical theory and literature (Barthes and Blanchot; Derrida and Kundera).
Selected publications
- Hawke, J. (2010) The Illustrated Library. Cambridge, Salt Press.
- Hawke, J. and Vickery, A. (2010) Poetry and the Trace. Sydney, Puncher and Wattmann.
- Hawke, J. (2009) Australian Literature and the Symbolist Movement. Sydney, University of Wollongong Press.
- Hawke, J. (1997) The Nightjar. Newcastle, Coal River Press.
- Hawke, J. (1996) The New World Tattoo. Newcastle, Coal River Press.
Competitive grants
- 2002-03: Strategic Research Development Grant (UoW)
- 1994-95: Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship for Poetry
- 1989-90: Tasmanian Arts Advisory Board, Writer’s Grant
- 1986-87: Writer’s Grant, Literature Board of the Australia Council
- 1984-85: Writer’s Grant, Literature Board of the Australia Council