Dr John Hawke

Background

John Hawke has a PhD in English from the University of Sydney, where his thesis was awarded the Dame Leonie Kramer Prize in 1999. From 1997-2006 he taught literary theory within the Faculty of Creative Arts, University of Wollongong. He is a widely published poet, who has received a number of grants and prizes, including the 1994 Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship for poetry. John has 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 Boxite. As coordinator and judge of the Newcastle Poetry Prize he has edited two anthologies of Australian poetry, The New World Tattoo (1996) and The Nightjar (1997). His critical study, Towards the Source: The Symbolist Movement in Australian Literature, will be published by University of Wollongong Press in 2008; a selection of his poetry is forthcoming from Salt Press (Cambridge).

Research Interests

My research has taken a comparative approach to the historical relationship between French Symbolist and Modernist poetics and its influence on contemporary poetry, with a particular focus on Australian literature. Towards the Source 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. This comparative examination of contemporaneous local and overseas developments suggests important implications for our understanding of how international Modernist theories were received in Australia.

This exploration has been broadened in my current research, which 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.

More generally, 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 poetry, and am currently convening an international conference in this field for 2008.

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

• Towards the Source: the Symbolist Movement in Australian Literature, University of Wollongong Press/Halstead Press (Sydney). Forthcoming 2008: accepted 2005.
• The Illustrated Library: Selected Poetry, Salt Press (Cambridge UK/Fremantle). Forthcoming 2008: accepted 2005.
• “Post-Symbolism: Yvor Winters, A.D.Hope and James McAuley” (Criticism: 3000 words). Paper delivered at A.D.Hope Centenary Conference, ANU, July 2007; accepted for publication in conference proceedings. Forthcoming 2007.
• “The Symbolist Movement in Australian Poetry” (Criticism: 2500 words). Paper delivered at Brennan/Mallarme Conference, University of Sydney, July 2007; accepted for publication in conference proceedings. Forthcoming 2007.
• Boxkite issues 5/6, “La Vita Nuova: Dante and Nerval” (Criticism: 2500 words). Forthcoming 2007: accepted 1/05.
• Jacket no. 26 October 2004, “Lord Slaughter” (Criticism: 2200 words)
• Salt: An International Journal of Poetry and Poetics, vol.15 2002 (pp.71-100) “Australian Literary Criticism: An International Approach”*
• Australian Divagations: Mallarmé and the Twentieth Century (New York, Peter Lang: 2002), pp.55-77, ed. Jill Anderson, “The Politics of Symbolism” (Book Chapter)
• Heat 3 (New Series) 2002 (pp.231-232) “Departure” (poem)
• _Jacket _no.15 December 2001, “Reliquary” (poem)
• Journal of Literature and Aesthetics (India), vol.2, no.1 2002, pp.176-181, “Contemporary Australian Poetry: An Introduction”
• Southerly, vol. 61, no. 1, 2001, “The Moving Image: Judith Wright’s Symbolist Language” (6000 words), pp.160-178*
• Southerly, vol.60, no. 3, 2000, “Black Highway”, “The Ghost”, “Ophelia” (three poems)
• Southerly, vol.60, no. 1, 2000 “The Politics of Symbolism: Correspondence of Jack Lindsay and Randolph Hughes” (8000 words), pp.58-77*
• _Heat _no.13 1999 (pp.104-105), “Persephone” (poem)
• Southerly, vol. 58, no.4, 1998-1999 “Slessor’s Library” (Criticism: 2000 words), pp.152-156
• Heat no.10 1998 “Intersection”, “Crossroads” (poetry) (pp.139-140)
• Southerly, vol.56, no. 3, 1996, “Slessor’s Politics”, pp.54-67
• Southerly, vol.55, no.4, 1996 “Robert Gray and the Vitalist Tradition” (Criticism: 4000 words), pp.96-105