Lisa Gorton (born 1972) is an Australian poet, novelist, literary editor and essayist.[1] She is the author of four award-winning poetry collections: Press Release,[2]Hotel Hyperion,[3]Empirical,[4] and Mirabilia.[5] Her second novel, The Life of Houses, received the NSW Premier's People's Choice Award for Fiction[6] and the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction (shared).[7] Gorton is also the editor of Black Inc's anthology Best Australian Poems 2013.[8]
Education
Gorton was educated at the University of Melbourne and at University of Oxford.[9] At Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar, Gorton completed an MPhil in Renaissance Literature and a DPhil on John Donne.[9] She received the John Donne Society Award for Outstanding Publication in Donne Studies.[10]
She is the granddaughter of the former Prime Minister John Gorton.[11]
Writing
Gorton's poetry has been widely anthologised, including in The Turnrow Anthology of Contemporary Australian Poetry,[16]The Best Australian Poems series (2008,[17] 2009,[18] 2010,[19] 2011,[20] 2012,[21] 2014,[22] 2015[23]), Contemporary Australian Feminist Poetry,[24] the Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry,[25] the Poetry Magazine May 2016 selection of Australian poetry, edited by Robert Adamson, with photographs by Juno Gemes,[26] and online anthologies Poetry International[9] and lyrikline.[27] Her poetry can also be found online at Cordite magazine.[28]
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.[34] She has also written ekphrastic poems for the catalogue of the 2010 Adelaide Biennial of Contemporary Art Before and After Science,[35] for the exhibition Conversations in Ellipsis,[36] and for the Melbourne Now limited edition volume from the National Gallery of Victoria.[37]
Gorton gave a poetry reading at TEDx Sydney in 2010.[38]
Awards and recognition
Gorton's awards for poetry include the Victorian Premier's Prize for Poetry,[30] the Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize,[10] and the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal.[39] 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.[6]
Her poetry books have also been shortlisted in the Prime Minister's Prize for Poetry,[40] the Mary Gilmore Poetry Prize,[41] the Melbourne Prize for Literature Best Writing Award,[41] and the NSW Premier's Poetry Award.[42]
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."
Works
Poetry
Individual poems have been published in HEAT,[55]Poetry,[56]The Best Australian Poems 2008,[17]The Best Australian Poems 2009,[18]The Best Australian Poems 2010,[19] and The Best Australian Poems 2012.[21]
