Identity area
Reference code
Title
Date(s)
- 2004 (Creation)
Level of description
File
Extent and medium
2 items
Context area
Name of creator
Biographical history
Robert Adamson was born in Sydney in 1943 and grew up in Neutral Bay and on the Hawkesbury River, New South Wales. From 1970 to 1985 he edited Australia’s New Poetry magazine, and in 1988, with Juno Gemes, he established Paper Bark Press, one of Australia’s leading poetry publishers. He is the inaugural CAL chair of poetry at UTS (University of Technology, Sydney). In 2011 he was awarded the Patrick White Prize and the Blake Prize for Poetry. His many award-winning publications include an autobiography, Inside Out (2004), two books of autobiographical fiction, and nearly 20 books of poetry, including Reading the River: Selected Poems (2004) and The Kingfisher’s Soul (2009) from Bloodaxe. His latest Australian publication is The Golden Bird: New & Selected Poems (Black Inc, 2008).
Archival history
Immediate source of acquisition or transfer
Content and structure area
Scope and content
Consists of letters and manuscripts relating to Reading the River: Selected Poems by Robert Adamson. Robert Adamson has been nourished for much of his life by Australia’s Hawkesbury River. Reading the River praises nature – red in tooth and claw – and celebrates existence as a mythological quest. The early poems trace Adamson’s own journey through a difficult childhood, prison and exile in the city, the source of a hard-won scepticism undercutting the highly personal Romanticism and daring lyricism of his later work.